Academic Program

Overview

The academic program of the Stanford University Online High School (OHS) is designed to introduce students with a wide range of exceptional academic talents and interests to the advanced work and instruction that will provide the appropriate development of these talents, and will situate graduates for success at the best colleges and universities in the world.  In completing the rigorous course of study available at the OHS, students acquire a mastery of content and skills that are articulated by instructors who are experts in their fields and that are further integrated into a distinctive intellectual framework.  Students additionally hone an independence and responsibility that allows them to take productive advantage of the college-style learning environment of the OHS.

The OHS curriculum comprises courses treating advanced and challenging material at every level in the school, culminating in post-AP and university level courses in a growing spectrum of disciplines, including mathematics, economics, physics, biology, English, and history.  In working towards these courses, students gain a preparation that will allow them to begin work in college already at an advanced level.  But the content of these courses does not exhaust the unique preparation that the OHS provides.  A defining feature of instruction at the OHS is the close interaction each student has with teachers who have the passion and expertise of dedicated students of a discipline.  At the level of course design, this means that OHS courses are created with a practitioner's understanding of what university and professional study in a subject consists in, and also of what it takes to get to that level of proficiency.  OHS courses, therefore, model and practice the professional methods, skills, norms, and intellectual habits of each discipline.  In science, then, students imbibe the central perspectives of hypothesis-formation, experimentation, and analysis; mathematics courses stress proficiency in problem-solving; students of English develop habits of daily writing and intentional use of language to communicate to specific audiences and in particular contexts; language learners work to acquire a functional proficiency that facilitates an appreciation of literature and culture; and in history, students prepare to engage substantively and productively in the historical discourse by learning to assess a variety of primary sources, to evaluate theses presented by scholars, and ultimately to formulate their own.

Individually, each OHS course offers not only discipline-specific knowledge and methodology, but also more generally applicable skills, such as an understanding of evidence, strategies of argumentation, criticism, and persuasion, familiarity with the analysis of data, and careful, critical reasoning.  The discrete study of these foundational skills across the curriculum is further unified in the four-year Core sequence, whose function it is to provide a common intellectual experience and identity among OHS students consisting in systematic exposure to and practice of structures of reasoning in a spectrum of disciplines.  Students who complete the Core sequence as part of their full course of study at the OHS characteristically exhibit the precision of writing, reasoning, and argument that is distinctive of an OHS education.

Critical to the fulfillment of these of these goals is the forum in which they are pursued. Instruction at the OHS is structured around the live discussion seminars.  Students' independent work, whether it consists in viewing recorded lectures, reading texts, solving problem sets and writing papers, or working through computerized exercises, sets the stage for the active, constructive engagement with the material with peers and instructors themselves in the virtual classroom setting.  Participation in these sessions provides the full measure of what the OHS academic program has to offer and the abilities it fosters in its students.  In discussion seminar, students participate in fast-moving conversations, stake out, defend, and critique positions on their feet, and participate in the instructor's modeling of inquiry in a discipline.  These skills are exceptional among high school students, and they serve OHS students well in college and professional settings.

Equipped with the analytical tools and expertise engendered by a robust engagement with the OHS curriculum, graduates are not simply well qualified to begin their college studies.  Rather, they are ready to engage immediately and at an advanced level in the opportunities available at the university level.  Their preparation, in content and in academic and intellectual habits and practices is the appreciable mark of the OHS academic program.

Middle School Program

The OHS middle school program is a comprehensive curriculum that extends the core values and components of the Online High School academic program to the middle-school grades. Courses at the middle-school level are specially designed to lay the intellectual foundation for advanced coursework by cultivating the critical reasoning, analytical, and communication skills necessary for academic achievement. Students enrolled in the middle school, therefore, hone the skills and habits assumed at the high-school level in the context of challenging material in each subject, while also pursuing high-school courses in areas of special talent or acceleration.

The OHS middle-school curriculum as a whole, and the individual courses themselves, are alike tailored to the backgrounds and appropriate objectives of students at this level. Middle-school science courses apply an inquiry-based approach that engenders familiarity with scientific methodology while introducing fundamental concepts in a manner accessible to students with broad mathematical preparation. A mastery of concepts such as energy and matter in these contexts is foundational to the more expansive and formal treatments in the respective scientific disciplines at the high-school and college levels. In the humanities, a pair of interdisciplinary English and history courses furnishes students with a broad cultural and conceptual setting for future study, but also introduces disciplinary methods and norms that students will deploy in high-school work. Each of these courses, finally, approaches its subjects with assessments, exercises, and pedagogy that are calibrated to the strengths and needs of middle school students. In the course of their studies, middle-school students from a spectrum of academic backgrounds make significant strides in scholarship that smooth the transition to the challenging high-school curriculum.