Georgia Tech Online Master of Science in Computer Science

Georgia Tech Online Master of Science in Computer Science (OMSCS) is a master of science degree offered by the College of Computing at Georgia Tech. The program is offered in partnership with Udacity and AT&T and delivered through the massive open online course format.[2] Georgia Tech has received attention for offering a full master's degree program for under $7,000 that gives students from all over the world the opportunity to enroll in a top 10-ranked computer science program.[3][4] The program has been recognized by the University Professional and Continuing Education Association, Fast Company, and the Reimagine Education Awards for excellence and innovation.[5][6][7]

Georgia Tech Online Master of Science in Computer Science
TypeDegree program
Established2014
Parent institution
Georgia Tech College of Computing
Students9,597[1]
Websitewww.omscs.gatech.edu

Background

The College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology launched its online Master of Science in Computer Science degree in January 2014.[2] The program was conceived by former Dean of Computing Zvi Galil and Udacity founder Sebastian Thrun.[3] Offered in partnership with Udacity and AT&T, OMSCS is delivered through the massive open online course format and was designed to provide a low-cost, high-quality alternative to traditional master's degree programs by delivering instructional content and academic support via the massive open online course format.[2][3][8] The current Dean of Computing, Charles Isbell, helped lead the effort to launch the program as then-senior associate dean.[4]

As of Spring 2020, the program has over 9,500 enrolled students located in 120 countries.[1] It admits all applicants deemed to possess a reasonable chance of success—about two-thirds of the approximately 30,000 applicants to date—which is significantly higher than the university’s on-campus graduate admissions rate.[1] From its creation in 2014 until the spring semester of 2020, the program has graduated almost 3,500 students and now graduates more than 1,300 students each year, with a retention rate of 70%.[9] Research by David Joyner & Charles Isbell found that applications to the on-campus program tripled after the launch of the online program. They also found the program is predominantly populated by domestic students, although the ratio of international students has been growing, and the program enrolls a higher rate of underrepresented minorities than the on-campus program.[9]

The program has received significant media attention since its announcement in May 2013, including a front-page story in The New York Times and a segment on the PBS NewsHour series "Rethinking Education".[10][11]

Curriculum and culture

The online master's program currently offers 40 courses and four specializations—Computational Perception and Robotics, Computing Systems, Interactive Intelligence, and Machine Learning.[12][13]

A study entitled “Can Online Delivery Increase Access to Education,” by John F. Kennedy School of Government at Harvard University Associate Professor Joshua Goodman, Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology Associate Professor Julia Melkers, and Harvard Faculty of Arts and Sciences Associate Professor Amanda Pallais, explored the structure and industry impact of the online master's program and concluded that it supplies the need of “a vast untapped market for highly affordable degrees from prestigious colleges.”[4][14]

Research published at the 2019 ACM Global Computing Education Conference noted that part of the reason for the program’s success is the alignment between platform and content. The professors, instructors, teaching assistants, and students in the program are uniquely qualified as CS students to contribute to the platforms used to produce and deliver the program. [15]

Due to the online format of the program, social media has played a significant role in the development of robust student communities.[16][17] The utilizes an artificial intelligence teaching assistant called Jill Watson, built using IBM’s Watson platform. Jill is able to answer questions posed in natural language and assists students enrolled in the program's Knowledge-Based Artificial Intelligence course, led by Professor Ashok Goel.[18] Jill has since been adapted for use in non-computer science courses, as well.[19]

To further reduce the load on human instructors and teaching assistance, as well as prevent duplicated effort on the part of students, the program uses the Piazza Automated Related Question Recommender, or PARQR, which suggests relevant existing posts as a student composes a new post. Created by a team led by Thad Starner, a professor in the School of Interactive Computing, and implemented in his Introduction to Artificial Intelligence OMSCS course, the tool has reduced duplicate posts by 40% and recommends relevant posts 73.5% of the time.[20]

The program has also introduced an artificial intelligence agent known as Jack Watson that monitors homework-for-hire sites for postings from OMSCS courses. When “hired” by a student, Jack provides a watermarked solution that can be automatically recognized once submitted by the student. Created by a team led by Thad Starner, Jack Watson has had success in identifying course submissions that are not original work.[21]

Recognition and impact

Former President Barack Obama publicly praised Georgia Tech's online master's program on two occasions, as providing a model to both address the STEM worker shortage and control the costs of higher education.[22][23] The program was the recipient of University Professional and Continuing Education Association’s Outstanding Program Award in the credit category.[5][24] OMSCS was also cited as the reason Georgia Tech was named to Fast Company’s 2017 list of Most Innovative Companies in the World—the third university so named and the first for work in the education sector.[6] In 2019, the program received the gold award for the best distributed/online program for nurturing 21st-century skills at the Reimagine Education Conference & Awards.[7]

The program has proved to be a model for other online degrees. Georgia Tech itself has launched two additional online master's degrees: one in Analytics and one in Cybersecurity. The online master’s initiative has spurred Georgia Tech to also offer undergraduate courses online, and they now offer three courses: Introduction to Computing; Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming; and Data Structures and Algorithms.[25]

Other universities have followed suit, creating more than 40 online degrees by the spring of 2019.[26][27][28][29] For example, in March 2018, Coursera announced six new, MOOC-based degree programs in collaboration with the University of Michigan, Arizona State University, the University of London, and Imperial College London.[30]

References
  1. "Leading Insight Through Empowerment". Georgia Tech Enterprise Data Management. Retrieved 2020-05-08.
  2. Georgia Institute of Technology (May 15, 2013). "Georgia Tech Announces Massive Online Master's Degree in Computer Science" (Press release). Retrieved 2017-09-25.
  3. Rivard, Ry (May 14, 2013). "Massive (But Not Open)". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 2017-09-25.
  4. Carey, Kevin (September 28, 2016). "An Online Education Breakthrough? A Master's Degree for a Mere $7,000". The New York Times. Retrieved 2017-09-25.
  5. "UPCEA Announces 2017 Association Award Recipients" (Press release). UPCEA. February 22, 2017. Retrieved 2017-10-18.
  6. "The 10 Most Innovative Companies In Education 2017". Fast Company. March 9, 2017. Retrieved 2017-09-25.
  7. "Best Distributed/Online Program for Nurturing 21st-Century Skills 2020 Award". Reimagine Education. Retrieved 2020-05-01.
  8. Galil, Zvi. "OMSCS: The Revolution Will Be Digitized". cacm.acm.org. Retrieved 2020-07-28.
  9. Joyner, David; Isbell, Charles (2019). "Master's at Scale: Five Years in a Scalable Online Graduate Degree" (PDF). L@S '19: Proceedings of the Sixth (2019) ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale. Chicago, IL.
  10. Lewin, Tamar (August 13, 2013). "Master's Degree Is New Frontier of Study Online". The New York Times. Retrieved 2017-10-09.
  11. "How online graduate programs offer degrees at significant savings". PBS Newshour. September 5, 2017. Retrieved 2017-09-25.
  12. "Current Courses". Georgia Tech College of Computing. Retrieved 2017-10-06.
  13. "Specializations". Georgia Tech College of Computing. Retrieved 2017-10-06.
  14. Goodman, Joshua; Melkers, Julia; Pallais, Amanda (2019). "Can Online Delivery Increase Access to Education?". Journal of Labor Economics. 37 (1): 1–34.
  15. Joyner, David; Isbell, Charles; Starner, Thad; Goel, Ashok (2019). "Five Years of Graduate CS Education Online and at Scale" (PDF). ACM Global Computing Education Conference. Chengdu, Sichuan, China.
  16. Fenton, William (April 22, 2016). "Don't Dismiss Georgia Tech's $6,000 Online Master's Degree". PC Magazine. Retrieved 2017-10-06.
  17. "Georgia Tech OMSCS". Google+. Retrieved 2017-10-06.
  18. Korn, Melissa (May 6, 2016). "Imagine Discovering That Your Teaching Assistant Really Is a Robot". The Wall Street Journal. Retrieved 2017-10-06.
  19. Pappano, Laura (April 8, 2020). "College Is Hard. Iggy, Pounce, Cowboy Joe and Sunny are Here to Help". The New York Times. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
  20. Bilgrien, Noah; Finkelberg, Roy; Tailor, Chirag; Irish, India (2019). "PARQR: Augmenting the Piazza Online Forum to Better Support Degree Seeking Online Masters Students". L@S '19: Proceedings of the Sixth (2019) ACM Conference on Learning @ Scale.
  21. Newton, Derek (January 30, 2020). "Georgia Tech Has An Undercover Cheating Bot". Forbes.
  22. Jackson, Abby (March 10, 2015). "The university where Obama is speaking today could revolutionize online education". Business Insider. Retrieved 2017-10-09.
  23. "Remarks by the President Announcing Student Aid Bill of Rights". The White House. March 10, 2015. Retrieved 2017-10-09.
  24. "Regional Awards". UPCEA. Retrieved 2017-09-25.
  25. "Online CS 1301 Course Offering". Georgia Tech College of Computing. Retrieved 2020-05-02.
  26. Young, Jeffrey (May 4, 2015). "U. of Illinois to Offer a Lower-Cost M.B.A., Thanks to MOOCs". The Chronicle of Higher Education. Retrieved 2017-10-06.
  27. "The First MOOC-Based Master's Degree in Date Science Presents a New Model for Meeting Market Demand". CS @ Illinois. March 29, 2016. Retrieved 2017-10-09.
  28. Hernandez, Elizabeth (February 8, 2018). "CU regents approve course for master's degree in electrical engineering". Daily Camera. Retrieved 2018-03-08.
  29. "Georgia Tech Creates First Online MS in Analytics Degree for Less Than $10,000" (Press release). Georgia Tech Professional Education. January 7, 2017. Retrieved 2017-10-06.
  30. Lederman, Doug (March 6, 2018). "Look Who's Championing the Degree". Inside Higher Ed. Retrieved 2018-03-16.
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