Global Online Academy joins the curriculum

Have you ever wanted to take a class on neuropsychology? How about comparative religions? advocacy?

In addition to the variety of classes offered here at University Prep, Global Online Academy is now an option for students. GOA offers around 40 different courses in specific fields of interests from Poetry Writing to Game Theory. These classes are available to students from schools located across the world.

Senior Nick Sage enrolled in a course called “Applying Philosophy to Modern Global Issues.” In his class, he is learning alongside students from a variety of places including Hong Kong, Hawaii and Atlanta. This diversity comes with its positives and negatives. Although it is interesting to share ideas with students from different ends of the world, in some cases the diversity extends further than the difference in perspectives and opinions.

“There are people who don’t have the same work ethic and it’s just harder to get [them]

motivated to work in an online format,” Sage said.

Sage had a group project where the other two members didn’t complete their work until 20 minutes before it was due. The night before, when Sage noticed they had not completed the assignment, he contemplated whether or not to do their sections for them.

“There’s no way of reallyknowing if they’re gonna get it done or not, which can be stressful,” Sage said.

That said, Sage is thoroughly enjoying his course. His favorite part so far has been distributing a survey with various morality questions on it and receiving around 500 responses.

Senior Emma Kellogg is taking the same philosophy class as Sage. However, she has a different teacher.

“It’s been somewhat of a disappointment,” Kellogg said, “Since the phrase ‘global issues’ is in the name, I expected that to be a little bit more of the focus but it’s really just been a study of the classics.”

Not that this is a bad thing. Although it’s not what she expected, Kellogg likes the content of the class. However, she is not as big of a fan of the teacher and his teaching style. There is a new assignment almost every day.

“He’s really not flexible about turning in [late assignments]; there [are] no extensions at all,” Kellogg said.

Due to the nature of the class, there are almost no weekends. Kellogg actually ends up spending extra time on Sundays preparing for the next week’s assignments.

An overlooked disadvantage to taking a class online is that if a student has a question, they aren’t able to raise their hand and receive an answer within seconds.

“It’s just been really difficult for him to expect us to get something done when it takes like hours to get a message back and forth,” Kellogg said.

On the other hand, junior Zack Beitel, who signed up for GOA’s Graphic Design course because the class at U Prep is hard to get into as a non-senior, has close to no complaints about his class.

“[My class has] been a really positive [experience] … The only problems have been planning Skype calls through my teacher,” Beitel said. “The first time he didn’t take into account the time zone change, but other than that I haven’t run into any problems.”

By: Annie Cohen