Future of Online Education in USA Dr Jeyakesavan

Future of Online Education in USA Dr. Jeyakesavan Veerasamy jeyv@utdallas. edu University of Texas at Dallas, USA. Almost all the content is based on my experience and observations. I did not use NOT based on Google search or any statistical data out there.

Agenda • • Self-introduction Online education: brief history Current state of “online education” Online education – best practices • Future of online education • Future of traditional education

Self-introduction: Dr. Jey Veerasamy • B. E. (ECE) from Anna University, Chennai • MS and Ph. D in Computer Science, University of Texas at Dallas (UTD), USA • 16 years of telecom software industry experience & 12 years of online faculty experience. • Back to classroom teaching at UTD for the past 2 years and conducted an online course this Summer. • spend 3 months in India every year conducting programming workshops and guest lectures in various Engineering Colleges.

What is Online Education? • Education through Internet • Anywhere, any time, any device connected to Internet • Asynchronous learning, but fixed # of weeks • All the work is graded & final grade is assigned • Degree certificate • What about lectures & exams?

Snippets from history • First online course in 1984? http: //en. wikipedia. org/wiki/NYIT_history • Popular online degree program in early days? • MBA. Why? • Hard working employees wanted to move up the management ladder, but they need a management degree!

Snippets from history … • How reliable is online degree? No exams? Who actually did the final project? Does it help to get a job? • Online colleges got accreditation • Turning point (my opinion): Traditional colleges started online degree programs – Few colleges maintain academic rigor with proctored exams

Who is a typical online student? • Working adults who cannot come physically to traditional colleges • Military personnel • Moms with young children at home • Students from rural areas What is the common trait for all these people? All of them are highly motivated.

Grading Scale: Traditional vs. Online Category Traditional Online Participation 5% (extra) 25% Quiz/Attendance 10% Assignments 40% 30% Exams 50% - Final project - 25% Team assignment - 10%

Interactions in Traditional vs. Online classroom

Effort Course 4 Course 3 7 weeks Course 4 Course 3 Course 2 Course 1 14 weeks Course 2 Course 1 7 weeks Traditional vs. Online course load Effort

Best practices: Weekly DQs (Discussion Questions) • Goal: Students should come up with most reasonable answers through discussion. • Set difficulty of DQs at 110% • Wrong initial answers are perfect discussion starters! • Faculty should facilitate & shape the discussion little bit, but should NOT kill it. • All meaningful posts count towards participation.

DQ strategies • Basic: 2 to 3 questions • Expanded: 5 to 10 questions • Personalized: assign specific question for each student for posting initial response • Empowered: designate each student as “DQ lead” for one question – post initial response, then keep improving the response based on others’ comments. • More details in another presentation…

Best Practices: Team assignments • Can it work online? • Can it be better than on-ground? • Potential for higher level of contribution from each student • Instructor can check the contribution of each student, if needed. • More details in another presentation….

Future of Online Education • More multimedia lectures. • Increase academic rigor – test application of concepts using weekly quizzes • Address plagiarism in popular assignments • Better communication tools to help the students.

Future of Traditional Education • Best components of online education will continue to make its way into traditional courses. More traditional courses will become mixed-mode: – % of lectures will be online. – More discussions in elearning • Few courses will likely become 100% online courses. What type of courses? – Detail oriented courses? – Courses with lot of concepts? • Typical student may do a few courses online – avoids timing conflict with other courses & enables students to do them with Summer jobs. • If pricing structure is lower for online courses, it will increase the popularity as well.

Thanks for attending! Questions & Answers Dr. Jeyakesavan Veerasamy jeyak 7@gmail. com jeyv@utdallas. edu