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 PhD 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 Team assignment

Interactions in Traditional vs. Online classroom

Traditional vs. Online course load 7 weeks 14 weeks Course 3 Course 4 7 weeks Effort 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 jeyak7@gmail.com jeyv@utdallas.edu