One of the greatest areas of growth at OU rests in online courses, such as graduate online programs in which students can complete entire degrees without ever having an in-person course.
eLearning — the online education component of OU — offers 14 fully online graduate programs through six OU Athens campus colleges.
There are currently almost 1,700 students enrolled in at least one online graduate course, said Linda Lockhart, director of communication and partnership support for eLearning.
The number of students enrolled in “Graduate Outreach” courses, including degrees earned online and at regional branches, has increased 233 percent since 2007 — making it the largest growing student population since that time, according to OU’s Office of Institutional Research.
Online graduate programs cost between $339 and $969 per credit hour per semester for an Ohio resident, while an out-of-state student would pay betweenOne of the greatest areas of growth at OU rests in online courses, such as graduate online programs in which students can complete entire degrees without ever having an in-person course.
eLearning — the online education component of OU — offers 14 fully online graduate programs through six OU Athens campus colleges.
There are currently almost 1,700 students enrolled in at least one online graduate course, said Linda Lockhart, director of communication and partnership support for eLearning.
The number of students enrolled in “Graduate Outreach” courses, including degrees earned online and at regional branches, has increased 233 percent since 2007 — making it the largest growing student population since that time, according to OU’s Office of Institutional Research.
Online graduate programs cost between $339 and $969 per credit hour per semester for an Ohio resident, while an out-of-state student would pay between $342 and $988 per credit hour per semester.
In comparison, nine to 18 credit hours of graduate classes for 2013-14 on OU’s Athens campus cost $9,444 a year for in-state students and $17,436 for nonresidents.
Popular programs include a master’s degree in information and telecommunication systems, master’s of science in civil engineering and master’s of business administration, said David Koonce, associate dean for the Graduate College.
“They’ve hired a good bit and they’ve just done a tremendous job in growing,” Koonce said. “If you’re not careful with how you grow, things can swamp you very quickly.”
The master’s of business administration program has grown from a first class of 57 students fall 2012 to a 284 current students, said William Lamb, associate dean of graduate programs in the College of Business.
Such programs lend themselves well to the online format because they lead to careers in the professional field, Koonce said.
“The goal is to tailor it to something that is pretty direct and immediately applicable to a career,” Koonce said.
Traditional, on-campus graduate programs are not decreasing in enrollment at OU, but they are more catered toward those who want to go into academic or research fields, Koonce said.
“What (on-campus graduate students) are doing is learning how to be researchers, and a lot of what they do is to help sustain the academic missions of the colleges,” Koonce said.
The College of Health Sciences and Professions’ online Health Administration degree program is the most popular of all OU’s graduate programs — online and in-person — accounting for about 8.5 percent of OU graduate students, Koonce said.
Online graduate courses must be approved by several university entities before they are launched. Generally, courses take about six months to create, Lamb said.
A master’s in business administration, obtained online, will be first given out in August 2014, Lamb said, after students have completed 12 courses with three different concentrations — healthcare, finance or executive administration.
As someone who created online courses for the degree, Lamb said it is strenuous for a professor to develop an online course.
Though a presentation or project in a traditional graduate classroom can develop as the semester progresses, faculty must have an online course completely developed by the first day a course is available, Lamb said.
“The material has to be just the way you want it at the very beginning of the semester,” Lamb said. “That takes a lot of extra work.”
Other state universities offer similar online graduate programs, such as Bowling Green State University — which has 16 online graduate programs — and Kent State University — which offers 13 programs.
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