GOA's Catalyst Exhibition: Student Projects Raise Awareness and Promote Change
GOA is proud to announce the projects that have been selected for inclusion in the Catalyst Exhibition Showcase from Semester 2. A long-standing culmination in GOA courses each semester, the Catalyst Exhibition of Learning, offers students the opportunity to explore, create, and display a self-directed project connected to their coursework content. The public facing gallery is a compilation of projects that have been nominated by teachers as outstanding and would benefit from a wider reaching publication. Noteworthy projects meet this criteria:
The project demonstrates the target outcomes impressively and that resulted from an exemplary process, which included careful, thorough research and excellent crafting of a beautiful question and shaping of an original and well-considered response to it. These projects also raise awareness and promote grassroots actions and institutional change.
We encourage you to view the capstone projects from GOA students in The Catalyst Exhibition!
The Catalyst project, which is embedded in the majority of GOA courses, exemplifies student agency by encouraging students to take charge of their own learning, to become creative problem-solvers, and to develop the skills and confidence to make an impact in their lives and their communities.
The Catalyst Exhibition of Learning for Semester 2 was hosted from April 18-22 and included over 1,000 projects from courses in all of GOA’s eight Learning Pathways.
Learning Pathways offers students the chance to delve deeply into an area by completing three or more GOA courses leading to a Learning Pathways Certification. As more and more students pursue the Learning Pathways Certification and/or take additional GOA courses, the Catalyst Exhibition affords students the opportunity to pursue a topic of interest further, and potentially produce higher quality and more sophisticated project work to share with new and wider audiences.
Charting their own learning starts with brainstorming and discussing ideas with peers, and then might include researching and summarizing scholarly articles, interviewing local experts, collecting and analyzing data, giving and receiving feedback from teacher and peers in preparation for the crafting a “for now” answer to their compelling question. Each final presentation also invites a response from the wider GOA community both spreading awareness of the topics and commending students for the process they have completed.
During the exhibition students are prompted to elevate and discuss presentations within their own course and also across courses. They are encouraged to explore work within domains they might not otherwise investigate. To support student peer feedback we invite students to nominate inspiring projects for Peer-to-Peer Recognitions.
The Catalyst Exhibition is a signature GOA learning experience for high school students. All GOA member schools are invited to participate in the project and conference.
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