With every new school year comes new students, new teachers, and new classes, but this year brings additional curriculum never before seen on campus. The addition of the Malone School classes, which students take in the Interactive Teleconference room, translates to a variety of subjects ranging from Arabic to the Ottoman Empire. Along with the teleconference classes also comes a wave of regular scheduled courses that diversify the options accessible to the student body.
On-campus classes surge with new material being offered this year. Opportunities for Upper School students with many various interests are available, and many students are exploring the fresh material. For example, Honors History Research is a course where students can pick a topic that is historically significant and research it for an entire semester.
“I like the ability to have a class where I am able to be independent and learn to research topics of my choice,” senior Jace Eliscu said.
The course’s flexibility gives students a chance to truly engage in what interests them the most. Senior and South African Anna Sephton is planning to spend the semester researching Western Culture’s effects on the Maasai tribe.
Other changes include modifications to the Ethics course, which got a facelift in its course material.
To supplement one’s schedule with more than just the regular classes offered, students must travel to the back of the library, past the gauntlets of chattering middle schoolers and monitoring librarians, and will eventually find a 21st century scene of the knights at the round table. Instead of solving quarrels among barrons, calculus problems are being dismantled and solved step-by-step. On one side of the table sit the course teachers, and on the other side are the students. Between them are hundreds of miles, bridged by cameras and microphones. This is the world of the new teleconference room, where students can take classes with professors across the country.
Students collaborate with those from ten other Malone schools participating in Stanford Online courses to diversify the classes they take. Stanford Online courses are taught by the nation’s leading professors, and Trinity boasts the most students involved in the online program. Depending on the amount of students joining in on a class from across the country, Trinity students watch themselves on a television on one side of the room, and the television on the opposite side of the room is reserved for the professor and the other schools partaking in the course.
The technology is what enables the room to become a state of the art learning center. Teachers of the courses wield virtual pens that transcribe on students’ laptop screens in real time, and the participants respond with a click of an illustrated hand icon on their computer to signal to the professor that he or she is ready to be called on.
The interaction between the different groups is truly a technological achievement, and the time delay between when the professor speaks and when it reaches the teleconference room’s speakers is almost non existent.
Students often sacrifice free time after school or during lunch to immerse into the new material. Credits are earned in the Interactive Teleconference room, a perk that is not normally offered for classes not instructed by on-campus teachers.
The new classes held in the teleconference room add a new dynamic to the curriculum.
Courses like Abstract Math and Meteorology spice up what opportunities are normally available to the students.
“It definitely is going to take a lot of effort, and our professor is treating us like college students, and the expectations reflect that,” said senior Joseph Robillard, enrolled in Advanced Multivariable Calculus. “The [class] is already forcing me to think and bend my brain in ways I hadn’t considered before.”
This year pioneers into uncharted curriculum territory with 14 changes to the course options. The field of study on campus has been broadened and choices for students continue to grow.
The future of learning has the potential to continue to grow as students jump head first into the pool of new classes that are now accessible to them.
