Flex Courses

Flex courses are short, flexible online learning opportunities for member school students. Students enter a global conversation about relevant, real-world topics and build modern learning skills with guidance from a teacher at their home school. Flex courses are designed for students in grades 7-12. Students explore a playlist of resources, engage in discussions with peers around the world or with classmates on campus, and complete hands-on activities to apply their knowledge.

For schools, flex courses provide a structured, professionally designed learning program for teaching a variety of essential skills that schools aim to develop in students, but that may not fit neatly into schedules, curricula, programming, or staffing plans. These courses are most impactful when schools use them to supplement on-campus learning in class, advisory programs, and other co-curricular learning. Most teachers report using flex courses with students during class time, but many also choose to split flex engagement between class and homework time. Individual student registration is permitted in select courses.

GOA offers two kinds of flex courses: scheduled and on-demand.

• Scheduled flex courses are five days and run on specific dates, conducted with the support of a GOA facilitator. There are no synchronous meeting times, however, teachers are encouraged to help students keep pace with the designed course cadence so asynchronous discussions are active and relevant at reliable times during the course. Students average around 45-60 minutes a day or 4-5 hours of total course engagement.

• On-demand flex courses are open year-round and the cadence of the student experience is driven by an on-campus teacher(s). There is no GOA facilitator for these learning experiences; instead, GOA provides affiliated teachers with a Teacher Playbook and student and teacher access to a complimentary learning space in GOA’s learning management system. On-demand flex courses have five parts, student engagement averages 30-45 minutes per part or 3-4 hours of total course engagement.

Flex courses are available exclusively to GOA members at no additional charge, and schools can enroll an unlimited number of students. More questions? Contact us.