Every day, outstanding teaching and learning take place both on campus and in the world beyond our walls. This article highlights how our educators foster academic growth, creativity, and curiosity in their students. Read on to learn more about online classes taken through our partner, Global Online Academy, that prepare students for future learning opportunities.

The Classes: Global Online Academy Classes

UPrep Upper School students can take classes offered by Global Online Academy (GOA), a leader in the online learning world that offers more than 50 high-quality, relationships-based online classes. The GOA Student Program is a consortium of more than 150 leading independent schools across 31 states and 27 different countries. Classes are designed and taught predominantly by teachers from the member schools, with some classes taught by outside experts. GOA’s array of online courses expands UPrep’s elective offerings, encouraging new interests and feeding student passion for learning through the diversity possible in a global, online environment. These classes help our students become self-directed learners, preparing them for college and for the learning they will need to do throughout their careers in the 21st-century world.

The Tasks: Six Core Competencies

GOA courses emphasize contemporary topics, project-based learning, and frequent communication with the teacher while helping students acquire the modern competencies required in our increasingly complex, networked world. All courses are designed to support students developing six core competencies:

• Collaborate with people who don’t share their location
• Communicate and empathize with people who have perspectives
different from their own
• Curate and create content relevant to real-world issues
• Reflect on and take responsibility for their learning and
that of others
• Organize their time and tasks to learn independently
• Leverage digital tools to support and show their learning

During second semester, 18 UPrep students took a variety of GOA classes, including Neuropsychology, Prisons and Criminal Law, Japanese Language Through Culture, and Introduction to Artificial Intelligence. Senior Sofia Pozzo took Computer Science II: Game Design and Development; this was her third GOA class. Senior Linda Nguyen took Data Visualization; this was her second GOA class. Both Sofia and Linda completed a few group projects for their classes.

The Outcomes

GOA Advisor and UPrep Science and Math Teacher Dr. Ragini Narasimhan, who goes by “Dr. N,” believes GOA classes prepare students to succeed in college and their future careers. “Online learning is here to stay, from researching online for a project to classes that are all online. GOA instructors introduce a topic and give students bite-sized information asynchronously, leading students through a myriad of information in a meaningful manner. The students assimilate information at their own pace. This mode of learning happens in the workplace when you are trying to learn something new,” she said. “For students who are ready, it’s good to be exposed to asynchronous learning in high school through GOA classes.”

Linda was drawn to the flexibility and independence that’s part of asynchronous learning. “I like being able to do the work at my own pace,” she said. “When it comes to STEM classes, I’m a self-motivated learner, so the GOA Data Visualization class fit my needs.”

Through taking three GOA classes, Sofia gained time management skills and learned how to organize her work. “This will be helpful in college, where the majority of work is outside of lectures,” she said.

Both Sofia and Linda said they strengthened their collaboration skills in these classes. “When everyone is working asynchronously in their
own time, it’s not like an in-person group project. In a normal group project, you could work on tasks together. It’s a lot more important to separate out the tasks and roles for people,” said Sofia. “The third project I worked on led to the most complete version of the game because we had communicated well throughout the design process. We updated each other daily and had multiple Zoom meetings. The key to good communication is talking often, even if what we talked about wasn’t necessarily guaranteed to lead to something.”

Linda seconds Sofia’s experiences. “I was paired up with people in different time zones. I reached out to my partners early to plan group projects. Communicating with my partners and being proactive was a large part of my GOA experience,” she said. “In a previous GOA class, I also wrote comments throughout my code to explain my process and my logic and made sure to name my variables something intuitive and easy to understand. I learned to be really clear with my words so my partners could understand my process and build upon my work.”

Coming up with a coherent, complete project with people from around the world while working independently and seeking feedback from each other are challenging tasks, adds Dr. N. “I think adults struggle with working across time and space, too. Students in GOA classes also begin to learn about working with people from other cultures. How do people in other countries give constructive feedback as opposed to people in Seattle? All of those cultural nuances come together when you are working together on a GOA course,” she said.

Linda said she enjoyed meeting people from around the world. “Although there weren’t a lot of opportunities to share about our lives, I loved watching people’s intro videos where we described ourselves to each other,” she said.

Through both of her GOA classes, Linda has met students who live in China, Singapore, and Jordan, and from all over the U.S. “It’s really interesting to learn about other people and who they are,” she said. ■