Global Online Academy at MCDS

In addition to introducing students to the work of philosophers as diverse as Socrates, Confucius, and Immanuel Kant, this course also aims to be richly interdisciplinary, incorporating models and methods from diverse fields including history, journalism, literary criticism, and media studies. Students learn to develop their own philosophy and then apply it to the ideological debates that surround efforts to improve their local and global communities.

Students will wrangle data and explore charts, distinguishing between effective and misleading visualizations. Employing principles from information graphics, graphic design, visual art, and cognitive science, students will then create their own stunning and informative visualizations.

What is a meaningful, happy, and fulfilling life? In this course, we’ll dive into what positive psychology research tells us about the formula for a meaningful life, the ingredients of fulfilling relationships, and changes that occur in the brain when inspired by music, visual art, physical activity, and more.

This course focuses on the art of shaping real experiences into powerful narratives. Students will examine diverse professional examples of the relevant and evolving genre of creative nonfiction while developing their own original works, reflecting stories from their lives and from the communities around them.

Social psychology examines how the thoughts, feelings, and behaviors of a person are influenced by the actual, imagined, or implied presence of others.

Students in this course will tackle real-world problems facing businesses large and small in today’s fast-changing global marketplace where radical reinvention is on the minds of many business leaders.

This online number theory course allows you to explore pure mathematical reasoning, along with the algorithms and encrypted transmissions that surround us.

What is a meaningful, happy, and fulfilling life? In this course, we’ll dive into what positive psychology research tells us about the formula for a meaningful life, the ingredients of fulfilling relationships, and changes that occur in the brain when inspired by music, visual art, physical activity, and more.

This course focuses on solving problems, designing systems, and understanding human behavior. It has applications not only in computer science, but also a myriad other fields of study. This introductory level course centers on thinking like a computer scientist, especially when it comes to understanding how computer scientists define and solve problems.

In this course students will explore the architecture, engineering, and construction of some of the most important buildings from human history. Students will be encouraged to build models of elements of these structures to better understand the construction and engineering behind their design.

In this experiential course students develop an understanding of entrepreneurship in today’s global market; employ innovation, design, and creative solutions for building a viable business model; and learn to develop, refine, and pitch a new start-up.

Nowhere is the face of global inequality more obvious than in climate change, where stories of climate-driven tragedies and the populations hit hardest by these disasters surface in every news cycle. In this course students will interrogate the causes and effects of climate change, and the public policy debates surrounding it.

This course is an exploration of the neurological basis of behavior. It will cover basic brain anatomy and function as well as cognitive and behavioral disorders from a neurobiological perspective.

Ethics is the study of what one should do as an individual and as a member of society. In this course students will evaluate ethical issues related to medicine and the life sciences.

Do you play games? Ever wonder if you’re using “the right” strategy? What makes one strategy better than another? In this course, we’ll explore a branch of mathematics known as game theory, which answers these questions and many more.

In this 14-week course, students become familiar with the legal rules and institutions that determine who goes to prison, and for how long.

This course focuses on a variety of atypical psychiatric disorders, helping students understand symptoms, diagnoses & treatments.

In this class, students enhance critical thinking skills by collaboratively solving medical mystery cases, similar to the approach used in many medical schools.

In this Online Psychology Course, students explore three central psychological perspectives: the behavioral, the cognitive & the sociocultural.

In this course you will learn about the algebra of vector spaces and matrices by looking at how images of objects in the plane and space are transformed in computer graphics.

In this course, you will go beyond the soundbites and menacing headlines to explore the context, causes, and consequences of the most pressing global issues of our time.

Inspired by GOA’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.

Students in this course study several of the major genocides of the 20th century (Armenian, the Holocaust, Cambodian, and Rwandan), analyze the role of the international community in responding to and preventing further genocides (with particular attention to the Nuremberg tribunals), and examine current human rights crises around the world.

In this course, students learn financial responsibility and social consciousness. We will examine a wide array of topics including personal budgeting, credit cards and credit scores, career and earning potential, insurance, real estate, financial investment, retirement savings, charitable giving, taxes, and other items related to personal finance.

This program helps English language learners in grades 9-12 improve their academic English. The program adapts to meet students' needs and goals, but is intended for students nearing English proficiency.

Cyber criminals leverage technology and human behavior to attack our online security. This 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.

This course develops students’ basic filmmaking skills across three key areas: camerawork, editing, and sound. Each of these areas is explored in detail through filmmaking practices. Throughout, we will increasingly focus on helping students express their personal outlooks and develop their unique styles as filmmakers.

What makes people sick? What social and political factors lead to the health disparities we see both within our own community and on a global scale? What are the biggest challenges in global health and how might they be met? Using an interdisciplinary approach to address these questions, this course hopes to improve students' health literacy through an examination of the most significant public-health challenges facing today's global population.

What makes a message persuasive and compelling? What helps audiences and viewers sort and make sense of information? This course explores the relationship between information and influence from a graphic design perspective. Topics include: principles of design and visual communication, infographics, digital search skills, networks and social media, persuasion and storytelling with multimedia, and social activism on the internet.

In this microeconomic theory course, students learn how consumers and producers interact to form a market and then how and why the government may intervene.

This course investigates various topics in science, technology, computer programing , engineering, and mathematics using a series of projects and problems that are both meaningful and relevant to the students' lives.

What is race? Is it something we’re born with? Is it an idea that society imposes on us? An identity we perform? These are just a few of the questions that students in this course will explore together as they approach the concept of race as a social construct.