Skip To Main Content

Spotlight Courses

Cybersecurity (GOA)
Cyber criminals leverage technology and human behavior to attack our online security. This Global Online Academy course explores the fundamentals of and vulnerabilities in the design of computers, networks, and the internet. Course content includes the basics of computer components, connectivity, virtualization, and hardening. Students will learn about network design, Domain Name Services, and TCP/IP. They will understand switching, routing and access control for internet devices, and how denial of service, spoofing and flood attacks work. Basic programming introduced in the course will inform hashing strategies, while an introduction to ciphers and cryptography will show how shared-key encryption works for HTTPS and TLS traffic. Students will also explore the fundamentals of data forensics and incident response protocols. The course includes analysis of current threats and best practice modelling for cyber defense, including password complexity, security, management, breach analysis, and hash cracking. Computational thinking and programming skills developed in this course will help students solve a variety of cyber security issues. There is no computer science prerequisite for this course, though students with some background will certainly find avenues to flex their knowledge in this course. 

A Glimpse into the classroom

Grade 9 Foundations
SERC Assembly
SERC

Search Spotlight Courses

Digital Design

This course invites students to learn and apply design principles and the user experience to a variety of digital formats, including graphic, video, and web.

Read More about Digital Design
Abnormal Psychology (GOA)

This Global Online Academy course focuses on psychiatric disorders such as schizophrenia, eating disorders, anxiety disorders, substance abuse, and depression.

Read More about Abnormal Psychology (GOA)
Advanced Chinese

Through selected authentic videos, films and news articles, students will be able to have in-depth conversations about various topics. Assignments in the course include research papers, debates, and in-class skits.

Read More about Advanced Chinese
Advanced French: Global Challenges and the Francophone World

This course introduces students to the different ways in which French-speaking communities around the world are impacted by, and respond to global challenges. Topics range from climate change to food insecurity, global health, economic inequality, social justice, human rights, and war.

Read More about Advanced French: Global Challenges and the Francophone World
Advanced Organic Chemistry

While traditional high school chemistry courses focus on predicting products and studying the properties of chemical reactions, organic chemistry focuses on the specific mechanisms by which bonds are broken and formed.

Read More about Advanced Organic Chemistry
Big History Project

“Big History Project” (BHP) is a course that invites us to think and to imagine on a really BIG scale, both in terms of time and space: it is designed to be a comprehensive, interdisciplinary history of the universe from the Big Bang to the present (and even the future).

Read More about Big History Project
Cybersecurity (GOA)

This Global Online Academy course explores the fundamentals of and vulnerabilities in the design of computers, networks, and the internet.

Read More about Cybersecurity (GOA)
Economics, Business, and Finance

This one-semester course introduces students to key microeconomic and macroeconomic concepts, basic business principles, and the workings of financial markets and institutions.

Read More about Economics, Business, and Finance
Extended Algebra 2

For students with a strong foundation in Algebra 1 and Geometry, this course emphasizes multiple representations of functions and fluency between them, through guided collaborative exploration and class discussion.

Read More about Extended Algebra 2
Extended Precalculus

A preparation for studies in calculus, Extended Precalculus explores numerical, graphical and analytical approaches to real valued functions.

Read More about Extended Precalculus
Honors Classics: Introduction to Homeric Greek

This course presents the essential forms, grammar, and vocabulary needed to begin reading Homer’s Iliad and Odyssey in the original. Students will spend the first semester studying the forms of Greek’s three noun declensions and the most common conjugated verb forms found in Homer, and will practice these forms nightly by translating simplified passages from Homer.

Read More about Honors Classics: Introduction to Homeric Greek
Introduction to Legal Thinking (GOA)

Inspired by Global Online Academy’s popular Medical Problem Solving series, this course uses a case-based approach to give students a practical look into the professional lives of lawyers and legal thinking.

Read More about Introduction to Legal Thinking (GOA)
Neuroscience

This course introduces students to the interdisciplinary field of neuroscience. We will learn the fundamentals of brain anatomy, the chemical processes that underlie its physiology, and common pathologies that affect the brain.

Read More about Neuroscience
Probability and Statistics

Through simulations, experiments, and collaborative and independent projects, students explore the roles of data and randomness in daily life, and develop tools to make sense of uncertainty.

Read More about Probability and Statistics
The Holocaust and Human Behavior

This course deeply examines the Holocaust through the lens of human behavior and psychology. Inspired and guided by Facing History and Ourselves’ Holocaust education program.

Read More about The Holocaust and Human Behavior
The Modern World

Modern World History examines global events from 1760 to the present under the umbrella of the essential question: What is “modernity”? Students will analyze from multiple perspectives the various revolutions that shook the Atlantic Basin at the end of the 18th century, industrialization, the growth and contraction of political and colonial empires, the experience of indigenous peoples, and war in the age of global interdependence.

Read More about The Modern World
Topics in Genetics

The primary commonality between all living things is a simple molecule that we call DNA. As scientific research advances, geneticists enrich our understanding of the dynamics, nuances and importance of this molecule and how it can be manipulated.

Read More about Topics in Genetics