ISA Students Recognised in GOA Catalyst Public Showcase

Three ISA Grade 10 students recently received recognition for their hard work in their Global Online Academy (GOA) courses, as their culminating projects were selected to feature in the online Catalyst Public Showcase.

ISA partnered with GOA in 2021 to promote student voice and choice. As a member school, ISA students were given the opportunity to broaden their academic horizons with increased course offerings, allowing them to pursue their passions and discover new subjects which spark their interest. Student agency is the foundation of the GOA organisation, and the Catalyst Exhibition was created seven years ago to celebrate this.

Of over 590 student projects in total submitted to GOA, only 19 of them were selected as exemplary and published in the Catalyst Project 2022-2023 Public Showcase, including ISA Grade 10 students Lilly, Freya and Daniela, as part of their Introduction to Psychology, Architecture and Entrepreneurship in a Global Context courses respectively.

Julia Watson, GOA Site Coordinator, said: "The students taking part in GOA's Catalyst Exhibition engage with their own learning in a personalised, passionate way. Through the Catalyst work, students synthesise the content they have learned through GOA and apply it to a 'beautiful question' that they pose and answer. This structuring of the project allows students to really explore and expand what they have learned in a new direction."

Each student, with feedback from their teachers and peers, poses a question to drive their project forward, using one of three tracks as a guide: 'Respond' which proposes a solution to a chosen UN Sustainable Development Goal; 'Share' which applies research to offer a response to a Beautiful Question, or 'Impact' which aims to make an impact on a chosen community. Participating students are given the chance to discover what their peers have been working on and celebrate each other's work across all GOA courses.

According to GOA, Catalyst will soon become the culminating project for all courses, as the project challenges students to find their own voice and agency through creating, designing and exploring their ideas.

ISA supports students on their individual journeys to self-discovery, challenging them to share their ideas from diverse perspectives and pursue a wide range of interests and passions outside of traditional classroom learning. Our partnership with GOA continues to be a fantastic opportunity for students to benefit from an increased sense of agency over their own learning experiences, nurturing their confidence to make decisions about their own future path.

Well done, and congratulations to Freya, Lilly and Daniela!

Daniela said “I had an incredible time working on my Catalyst Project for GOA, I thought it was an incredible opportunity in which I could apply skills I had been learning throughout the course to a final project that I was passionate about. The topic I worked on was something I was interested in for years and the catalyst project gave me the opportunity to start working on it. I specifically enjoyed this experience because along the process of finalizing the project, I was getting feedback from classmates around the world and this truly gave me insights into things I had never thought about before. I personally really enjoyed the project and now that the second semester has started and I am studying a new course I am even more excited to see what I can do with GOA. I am also excited to see the catalyst exhibition for this new semester to see what my peers have been working up to with their selected courses.”

Lilly said: “The catalyst project was a very interesting and GOA specific project, different from anything I have done in the past at ISA. Though I think it could be compared to the 10th grade MYP Personal Project, it was absolutely more personal and course-specific. The course I chose was introduction to psychology, and an overarching theme of the class involved discussing how various aspects of what we learned applied and related to the teenage brain. These topics ranged from the psychological, biological, and cognitive perspectives, to learning how the brain reacted to different things, and so much more. One assignment we had was to listen to and take notes about a podcast episode of our choice, and I chose an episode that talked about the effects of alcohol on the teenage brain. Following this, I watched a documentary on Netflix called "Take Your Pills' ', which expanded on the competition both in a school environment and in the workforce as a result of prescription stimulants such as Adderall. Following this, I was particularly interested in learning more about this topic, and more specifically about how it affects the teenage brain. Soon after this, we began thinking about the catalyst exhibition of learning, and I knew I wanted to do something about this topic to further spread awareness about the dangers of this phenomenon, as well as proposing solutions and ways that it can be avoided. Because my class focuses on psychology, I constructed a question with feedback from my teacher to outline not only the abuse of cognitive enhancing drugs, but also mental wellness with healthy alternatives and options.”