An online character education course will be launched this summer and participants’ feedback and suggestions will be used to finalize the program for integration into Choices and Challenges and as an optional course for students and faculty next year, Head of Upper School Audrius Barzdukas said.

The course was conceptualized when an extensive search for an online character education class tailored to schools such as Harvard-Westlake failed to produce any results. Following months of work by Barzdukas, Choices and Challenges coordinator Michelle Bracken and others, the curriculum itself is complete, with online transcription, the final step, under way, Barzdukas said.

“I think that our school is always trying to use the best tools to teach,” Barzdukas said. “Whether that tool is a microscope, a paintbrush or the internet, I think part of our school culture has always been asking, ‘what is the best tool, and let’s go use it.’ So the internet is this gigantic tool that’s out there, and we’re going to see.”

Divided into 10 half-hour sessions with three-to-five minute modules in each session, the course is designed to be easily completed either bit by bit  or in a single sitting.

“What we expect is everyone who takes the class will have maybe just a little more happy, productive, self-aware and enlightened life,” Barzdukas said. “It’s going to have practical value.”