Online Courses

Sign up for one of our upcoming online courses! Each course consists of 10-12 hours of learning across four sessions:

  1. Two live, 2-hour sessions taught online via Zoom by the course instructor. You must be able to participate in these live sessions to complete the course. The live sessions are not recorded. (Note: All times noted below on course schedules are in US Eastern Time.)

  2. Two asynchronous, self-paced sessions of 3-4 hours of expected learning time each, during which you will review material, engage in a learning design activity, and receive coach feedback.

Courses are taught by leading experts and coached by experienced educators. All participants will receive a certificate of their learning hours for course completion.

Note: These courses are open only to educators based in the United States.

All courses are only $15 per participant.

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2026 Upcoming Courses

HarvardX: We the People: Civic Engagement in a Constitutional Democracy

Ongoing Enrollment | Learn more and register

Gain a foundational knowledge of American constitutional democracy and understand how to encourage others to explore their own civic paths, while in parallel crafting your own civic voice and identity.

Our Declaration: “We the People” and the Declaration of Independence

  • “Life, liberty, and the pursuit of happiness,” and the right of the People to “alter or abolish” their government — the famous words of the Declaration of Independence — lay the foundations of our constitutional democracy. In this course, Danielle Allen helps us explore how the document took shape and what guiding principles we can find in it for our own lives today. Drawing on the Educating for American Democracy Roadmap, participants will work together to interpret the Declaration’s arguments for freedom and equality, its religious appeals, and later efforts to bring the United States closer to the ideals of the Declaration and to realize its vision of equality and liberty. You will develop ways to help your students reflect on both the importance of the Declaration in their current lives and also its significance for their ongoing engagement as civic participants.

  • Danielle Allen is James Bryant Conant University Professor, Co-Director of the Justice, Health & Democracy Impact Initiative, and the former Director of the Edmond & Lily Safra Center for Ethics. She is a professor of political philosophy, ethics, and public policy. She is also a seasoned nonprofit leader, democracy advocate, national voice on pandemic response, distinguished author, and mom. Danielle’s work to make the world better for young people has taken her from teaching college and leading a $60 million university division to driving change at the helm of a $6 billion foundation, writing as a national opinion columnist, advocating for cannabis legalization, democracy reform, and civic education, and most recently, to running for governor of Massachusetts. During the height of COVID in 2020, Danielle’s leadership in rallying coalitions and building solutions resulted in the country’s first-ever Roadmap to Pandemic Resilience; her policies were adopted in federal legislation and a presidential executive order. Danielle made history as the first Black woman ever to run for statewide office in Massachusetts. She was the 2020 winner of the Library of Congress' Kluge Prize, which recognizes scholarly achievement in the disciplines not covered by the Nobel Prize. She received the Prize "for her internationally recognized scholarship in political theory and her commitment to improving democratic practice and civics education." A past chair of the Mellon Foundation and Pulitzer Prize Board, she is a member of the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and American Philosophical Society. As a scholar, she currently concentrates on the Democratic Knowledge Project and Justice, Health, and Democracy Impact Initiative, housed at the Safra Center, on the Democracy Renovation Project, housed at Harvard’s Ash Center, and on the Our Common Purpose Commission at the American Academy of Arts and Sciences. Her many books include the widely acclaimed Our Declaration: a reading of the Declaration of Independence in defense of equality; Cuz: The Life and Times of Michael A.; Democracy in the Time of Coronavirus; and the forthcoming Justice by Means of Democracy. She writes a column on constitutional democracy for the Washington Post. Outside the University, in her role as board chair for Partners In Democracy, she continues to advocate for democracy reform to create greater voice and access in our democracy, and drive progress towards a new social contract that serves and includes us all. She also serves on the board of the Cambridge Health Alliance.

  • Session 1 (Live Zoom session) Wednesday, July 8, 7-9pm ET

  • Session 2 (asynchronous) opens Thursday, July 9

  • Session 3 (asynchronous) opens Thursday, July 22

  • Session 4 (Live Zoom session) Wednesday, August 5, 7-9pm ET

Difficult Conversations in the Classroom

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  • Session 1 (asynchronous) opens Thursday, October 1

  • Session 2 (live Zoom session) Thursday, October 15, 7-9pm ET

  • Session 3 (asynchronous) opens Friday, October 16

  • Session 4 (live Zoom session) Thursday, October 29, 7-9pm ET

  • Creating a classroom environment that allows for open, honest, respectful conversations about difficult and potentially sensitive topics can be challenging. And yet providing time and space to teach and model for students how to engage respectfully with one another’s ideas and opinions is more important than ever. Dialogue, including disagreement, is an essential part of a healthy democracy. In this course, we'll examine a case study that illustrates how teaching sensitive historical and current events can lead to difficult conversations with students, families, community members, school board members, and other stakeholders. We’ll share and model a variety of pedagogical strategies for facilitating civil discourse and supporting students in developing their capacity for reflective patriotism, a sense of voice and agency, and civic friendship.

Securing the "Blessings of Liberty": The U.S. Constitution

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  • Dimitrios Halikias is an assistant professor of political science at Yale University. He works on political theory and intellectual history and has research interests in American political thought, nineteenth-century debates over capitalism, and contemporary democratic theory. He holds a PhD in Government from Harvard University and was previously a postdoctoral fellow at the Princeton Society of Fellows. 

  • Session 1 (Live Zoom session) Thursday, October 8, 7-9pm ET

  • Session 2 (asynchronous) opens Friday, October 9

  • Session 3 (asynchronous) opens Thursday, October 22

  • Session 4 (Live Zoom session) Thursday, November 5, 7-9pm ET

  • The United States Constitution has been in use longer than any other written constitution in the world, but when the framers wrote and revised its original text, they worried about whether it would be strong enough to survive the conflicts of their day. Could a country as large as the United States really function as a constitutional democracy? Could the Founders create a government strong enough to hold the union together? Ultimately, they created an enduring framework of checks and balances that enables our pluralistic society to come together, debate issues, and find consensus. In this course, we’ll think about the fundamental principles of the Constitution, and how it continues to structure our civic life today.

A New Birth of Freedom: The Gettysburg Address

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  • Diana Schaub is professor emerita of Political Science at Loyola University Maryland and a non-resident Senior Scholar in the Social, Cultural, and Constitutional Studies department at the American Enterprise Institute. A member of the Board of Directors of the Abraham Lincoln Institute, she also sits on the publication committee of National Affairs. She is an Academic Advisory Council Member and Founding Civics Initiative Faculty at the Jack Miller Center. She is the author of numerous book chapters and scholarly articles in the fields of political philosophy and American political thought. She is a co-editor (with Amy and Leon Kass) of What So Proudly We Hail: The American Soul in Story, Speech, and Song (ISI Books, 2013). Her book on Lincoln’s rhetoric and statesmanship, His Greatest Speeches: How Lincoln Moved the Nation, appeared in 2021 from St. Martin’s Press. She holds a Ph.D. and MA in political science from the University of Chicago.

  • Session 1 (Live Zoom session) Thursday, October 22, 7-9pm ET

  • Session 2 (asynchronous) opens Friday, October 23

  • Session 3 (asynchronous) opens Thursday, November 5

  • Session 4 (Live Zoom session) Thursday, November 19, 7-9pm ET

  • Abraham Lincoln is often credited with having saved or re-founded the American Union by giving it a “new birth of freedom.” In this course, we will seek to understand Lincoln’s statecraft in conjunction with his literary craft. We will concentrate on Lincoln’s Gettysburg Address, examining it alongside the Declaration of Independence which it famously quotes. We will explore the character of American constitutional democracy, with a focus on the concepts of liberty and equality. We will inquire into the nature of self-government and the threats it faces. Why did we have a civil war? What was the status of slavery in the American constitutional order? Why was secession illegitimate? What does Lincoln suggest is needed to forge a new Union capable of achieving both racial and sectional reconciliation? What guidance can the Gettysburg Address offer to later generations? Is there still a “great task remaining before us”?

Future Courses (Dates and Details To Be Announced)

Integrating Project-Based Learning in K-12 Classrooms to Develop Civic Knowledge, Skills, and Dispositions

  • For middle and high school teachers, this course will support you in helping students strengthen the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed for civic participation and to understand their roles and responsibilities in sustaining a constitutional democracy. For teachers of younger students, this course will allow you to cultivate foundations to help young people become engaged and connected community members guided by core civic values and abilities.

    We’ll draw from examples of student work to support you in planning and carrying out project-based learning to support the development of students’ civic knowledge, skills, and dispositions in your local context. If you are new to project-based learning or are seeking guidance about how to further embed it into your classroom, this course is designed to support you in applying the project-based learning processes and principles to support students in exploring and taking action on local issues.

Superpower: The U.S. and the Vietnam War

  • Understanding the history of the Vietnam War is critical to understanding the influence and power of the United States as an international presence in the world today. From civil disobedience and protests, especially on college campuses, to the major and rapidly evolving role of television and media in the civic arena, the history of the Vietnam era holds many lessons and resonances to help us better make sense of the intense debate over how the U.S. defines and pursues its national interests. In this course, we’ll think about how best to support students in learning a full and accurate history of this period, and in thinking critically about the role that America and Americans play in a global context.

A More Complete American Story: The History of Jim Crow

  • Understanding our historical and political context in a full and accurate way, by engaging with hard histories and multiple perspectives, makes us better-informed civic participants. This course offers participants the opportunity to engage with the historiographical debates surrounding the history of Black lived experiences, race (not just Black and White), and immigration (from South America, Central America, and Asia) as they relate to Jim Crow, civil rights, pluralism, and fights against continued oppression. This course also supports participants in identifying the continuities and discontinuities between the Jim Crow era and our current historical moment.

Digital Competency in the Age of AI

  • AI tools such as ChatGPT are already transforming education and the public sphere. How should we engage with such technology to improve student learning outcomes and our society? As it stands, such AI tools are treated as expert, even though they are not expert in any field and are vulnerable to abuse, falsehoods and adversarial attacks. The lack of effective oversight and accountability for this technology exacerbates these problems. This course provides the basic digital competency on how state-of-the-art AI tools work (no prior knowledge necessary) and how we should prepare students to engage with them.

The Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy: Making K-12 History and Civic Learning Meaningful

  • What do you get when you ask 300 educators and academic experts, all across the political spectrum, what “excellence in teaching history and civics” really looks like? You get the Roadmap to Educating for American Democracy, a set of key themes, questions, challenges, and pedagogical principles that guide us on our way to best practices K-12 in history and civics. 

    The Roadmap helps us to think about how to make history and civic learning and dialogue rigorous and accessible for all students in the United States, how to cultivate students’ civic identity and sense of responsibility, and how to support students as they learn to act in a responsible and informed manner as citizens. In this course, participants will engage deeply with the Roadmap, drawing on its guidance as they (re)design lesson plans and teaching materials.

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