Ed Tech Podcast: Turning a Traditional Master's Program Into an Online Success - Wired Campus

Ed Tech Podcast: Turning a Traditional Master’s Program Into an Online Success

February 13, 2012, 3:58 pm

Karen Gallagher

Many colleges look to online education as the path to growth, but it is often a bumpy road. At the Higher Ed Tech summit in January, a dean from the University of Southern California told me how she avoided the potholes. Karen Gallagher, dean of the university’s Rossier School of Education, took her school’s master’s degree in teaching online with the help of 2tor, a company that builds digital teaching platforms for traditional universities. “It’s our degree,” she says, “and our faculty.” That faculty had to learn a new way to teach for online students, however, and 2tor helped with that, as well as recruiting and placing students in teacher-training positions. The company had to learn that “we are not the Wild West and we have rules,” Ms. Gallagher says. But the partnership is a success: Today the university’s program has 2,000 students in 43 states and over 20 countries, reflecting growth that would not have been possible if it were limited to bricks and mortar.

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nybound

I’m not familiar with this particular program, but most online programs are jokes. I know a teacher who did an online Master’s so he could get a raise. Problem is, he admits he did less than 1/2 the coursework himself.
ok_he

That could happen in any program, not just online. It shows a lack of knowledge (or willingness to change) to make such a general statement about online programs.
22280998

More details would have been very useful. How do you incorporate class Q&A, discussions of case studies, and group exercises into courses?

Success appears to be defined only by the number of students in the program. What about their professional placement or advancement in permanent jobs?
rasale

In my area, I have seen dozens of young teachers get their masters degree through a very “respectable” and “face to face” university that offers a cohort program. They begin together and work for about 18 months in classes that meet one evening a week, and end up with a masters. The real joke is that as long as you pay the tuition and attend class, you will get your degree. When I was teaching in a k-12 environment, I would often hear these masters students bragging in the teachers’ lounge about how easy the program was. They did “group” projects for almost every class. Everyone passed, regardless of how much effort actually went into the program.

However, this experience would lead me to brand all face to face cohort programs as a joke. The real value lies in the student. Lazy students will cheat and slide through any environment. Honest students who want to prepare for a good career will do the work in any environment.
gdagata

The graduate program I’m in started as a face-to-face, morphed into a hybrid and is now strictly online. In some of my classes we have used Google Docs to write group papers and to role play activities. In all of my classes, we also initiate and contribute to discussions based on instructor questions. Many of the discussions in which I have participated have continued beyond their deadlines because of the interest and enthusiasm of my classmates and the input of my instructors. Of course, anyone could be doing the work, but that’s the case even for face-to-face classes. The amount of time we spend in the “classroom” and the specific locations we enter (assignments, discussions, video and print lectures, additional readings and videos) are tracked by day and time, so I have never felt that I could slack off easily. Again, my brilliant friend could be doing my work and logging in for me, but this friend could do my research and write my papers and do my other assignments if my classes were in a brick and mortar classroom. How many people have we known with advanced degrees from traditional programs who have caused us to scratch our heads and ask, “Where did you go to school?”
iheartpedagogy

I understand where you’re coming from, NYBound. My experience with the online classes I’ve taken in the past was “meh”. Now prepare thineself for my über-long response—apologies for the verbosity. Know that I have smacked my own hand.

I am currently a student in the MAT-TESOL@USC program and have found nothing “meh” about it. Students in the 1 year+ long program must attend weekly, synchronous classes via web conference in which we are required to participate in class discussions using a webcam and phone or VoIP.

I am a full-time student taking four classes presently: one held every Wednesday from 530am to 730am, another on the same day from 530pm to 8pm, and 2 on Saturdays that, together, run from 9am to 1pm. I also happen to be one of the few students in the program working full-time and, like those of my counterparts who also juggle work, homework, student teaching, and classes, have found it an incredibly tough slog.

In addition to class time and, of course, homework, we have student teaching requirements which are coordinated by 2tor and verified by the same, as well as by video recordings of our classroom teaching that are then analyzed in study group sessions and in class. As a related aside, I teach ESL after work, weekly at a local library. Student teaching not only allows us to practice the theories we learn in the program, but also gives us an environment in which to implement our Action Research Project (ARP), a capstone project designed in our last two terms. One among us is entering her ARP results in a CATESOL competition. Another was recently accepted to the University of New Mexico’s linguistics doctoral program.

As if the student teaching requirement weren’t enough to cause your average grad student to rip their hair out, I’d say that approximately 75% of all of our classes have required weekly study group sessions which must be coordinated among group members who may reside in locations as disparate as Turkey, Korea, Des Moines, Iowa… These sessions are also held via a combination of web conference, webcam, VoIP/teleconference, are recorded, and are included in our participation grade.

Ok, I’ve said a mouthful and then some! My ultimate point is that USC’s online program is a rigorous, demanding, interactive one. So rigorous that there have been numerous times that I wanted to give up and some in my cohort chose to do just that. So demanding that I often thought I would have had fewer demands on my time had I elected to complete, say, a communications or even an MBA program at a local university (something I considered before deciding upon the MAT@USC). So interactive that I have made close friends in the program with whom I’ve shared many a phone call, IM, Facebook message, email, and text message to clarify assignment requirements, share tips on job opportunities, complain about our nonexistent social lives and, more recently, to chat about meeting up at commencement or flying out to meet each other sometime soon.

So that’s my experience. I think it all sounds not at all like what folks think of when they hear the term “online degree program” but I readily admit that I’m biased. ;)