research-article

Five Years of Graduate CS Education Online and at Scale

Authors:

David A. Joyner,

Charles Isbell,

Ashok GoelAuthors Info & Claims

CompEd '19: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Global Computing Education

Pages 16 - 22

https://doi.org/10.1145/3300115.3309534

Published: 09 May 2019 Publication History

Abstract

In 2014, Georgia Tech launched an online campus for its Master of Science in Computer Science program. The degree, equal in stature and accreditation to its on-campus counterpart, offered a notably lower cost of attendance. Its design emphasized flexibility in both geography and time, allowing students from around the world to earn a highly-ranked MSCS without taking time off work or moving to campus. Five years later, the program enrolls over 8000 students per semester and has graduated 1500 alumni. It is believed to be the largest program of its kind and has received recognition from national organizations on professional education. Existing research on the pro-gram has focused on challenges and opportunities to scale that are agnostic to the content itself. In this reflection, we look at the creation and growth of the program as it relates to graduate-level CS instruction. In particular, we note a unique and powerful unity of content and platform: the online delivery of the program dovetails with the technical skillsets of the professors and students that it draws, putting both in the position to contribute and innovate.

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Cited By

Adkins KJoyner DJoyner DKim MWang XXia M(2024)Newly Created Assignments and The First Repository Effect on Inter-Semester PlagiarismProceedings of the Eleventh ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale10.1145/3657604.3662043(211-220)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3657604.3662043
Joyner DDuncan AJoyner DKim MWang XXia M(2024)Ten Years, Ten Trends: The First Decade of an Affordable At-Scale DegreeProceedings of the Eleventh ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale10.1145/3657604.3662038(143-153)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3657604.3662038
Carlon MBoonyubol SKeerativoranan NCross J(2023)Educational Data Science Approach for an End-to-End Quality Assurance Process for Building Creditworthy Online CoursesEducational Data Science: Essentials, Approaches, and Tendencies10.1007/978-981-99-0026-8_4(151-191)Online publication date: 30-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0026-8_4
Show More Cited By

Index Terms

Five Years of Graduate CS Education Online and at Scale
1. Applied computing
  1. Education
    1. Distance learning
    2. E-learning

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Published In

cover image ACM Conferences

CompEd '19: Proceedings of the ACM Conference on Global Computing Education

May 2019

260 pages

ISBN:9781450362597

DOI:10.1145/3300115

General Chairs:
Ming Zhang
Peking University, China
,
Bo Yang
Linyi University, China
,
Program Chairs:
Steve Cooper
University of Nebraska-Lincoln, USA
,
Andrew Luxton-Reilly
University of Auckland, New Zealand

Copyright © 2019 ACM.

Permission to make digital or hard copies of all or part of this work for personal or classroom use is granted without fee provided that copies are not made or distributed for profit or commercial advantage and that copies bear this notice and the full citation on the first page. Copyrights for components of this work owned by others than the author(s) must be honored. Abstracting with credit is permitted. To copy otherwise, or republish, to post on servers or to redistribute to lists, requires prior specific permission and/or a fee. Request permissions from [email protected].

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SIGCSE: ACM Special Interest Group on Computer Science Education

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New York, NY, United States

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Published: 09 May 2019

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CompEd '19

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SIGCSE

CompEd '19: ACM Global Computing Education Conference 2019

May 9 - 19, 2019

Chengdu,Sichuan, China

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CompEd '19 Paper Acceptance Rate 33 of 100 submissions, 33%;

Overall Acceptance Rate 33 of 100 submissions, 33%

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CompEd '25

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ACM Global Computing Education Conference 2025

October 21 - 25, 2025

Gaborone , Botswana

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Cited By

Adkins KJoyner DJoyner DKim MWang XXia M(2024)Newly Created Assignments and The First Repository Effect on Inter-Semester PlagiarismProceedings of the Eleventh ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale10.1145/3657604.3662043(211-220)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3657604.3662043
Joyner DDuncan AJoyner DKim MWang XXia M(2024)Ten Years, Ten Trends: The First Decade of an Affordable At-Scale DegreeProceedings of the Eleventh ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale10.1145/3657604.3662038(143-153)Online publication date: 9-Jul-2024
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3657604.3662038
Carlon MBoonyubol SKeerativoranan NCross J(2023)Educational Data Science Approach for an End-to-End Quality Assurance Process for Building Creditworthy Online CoursesEducational Data Science: Essentials, Approaches, and Tendencies10.1007/978-981-99-0026-8_4(151-191)Online publication date: 30-Apr-2023
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-981-99-0026-8_4
Joyner DKizilcec RDavis KOchoa X(2022)Meet Me in the Middle: Retention in a "MOOC-Based" Degree ProgramProceedings of the Ninth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale10.1145/3491140.3528283(82-92)Online publication date: 1-Jun-2022
https://dl.acm.org/doi/10.1145/3491140.3528283
Duncan AJoyner D(2022)On the necessity (or lack thereof) of digital proctoring: Drawbacks, perceptions, and alternativesJournal of Computer Assisted Learning10.1111/jcal.1270038:5(1482-1496)Online publication date: 26-Jun-2022
https://doi.org/10.1111/jcal.12700
Chalermsook KAnutariya C(2022)CareerVio: A Platform for Personalized Collaborative and Gamified Software Engineering MOOCs2022 19th International Joint Conference on Computer Science and Software Engineering (JCSSE)10.1109/JCSSE54890.2022.9836240(1-6)Online publication date: 22-Jun-2022
https://doi.org/10.1109/JCSSE54890.2022.9836240
Wang QCamacho IGoel A(2022)Investigating the Potential of AI-Based Social Matching Systems to Facilitate Social Interaction Among Online LearnersSocial and Emotional Learning and Complex Skills Assessment10.1007/978-3-031-06333-6_13(279-298)Online publication date: 25-Aug-2022
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Eicher BJoyner DMeinel CPérez-Sanagustín MSpecht MOgan A(2021)Toward Reshaping the Syllabus for Education at ScaleProceedings of the Eighth ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale10.1145/3430895.3460987(355-358)Online publication date: 8-Jun-2021
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Park DSchmidt RAkiri CKwak SJoyner DJoyner DKizilcec RSinger S(2020)Affordable Degrees at ScaleProceedings of the Seventh ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale10.1145/3386527.3405923(25-35)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2020
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Joyner DWang QThakare SJing SGoel AMacIntyre BJoyner DKizilcec RSinger S(2020)The Synchronicity Paradox in Online EducationProceedings of the Seventh ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale10.1145/3386527.3405922(15-24)Online publication date: 12-Aug-2020
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