LSU Online’s degree paths allow students across the world to get a degree through the University without having to step foot in Baton Rouge.
The department is in charge of the online classes offered to students during the fall and spring semesters, but LSU Online mainly focuses on offering online-only degree paths for national and international students.
The online program started in March of 2013 with three different programs available to students, but since its inception, the program has tripled in size to nine programs, said Amanda Major, interim director of LSU Online.
“LSU wanted to stay competitive in online programs, so we have progressed lightning quickly in the past two years to keep in competition with other universities across the country,” Major said.
Major said the fully-online degree programs reach all across the world to students who cannot be at the University to study by offering condensed terms. These programs are designed for students looking to further education after college.
“Most of our 100 percent online programs are for continuing studies,” Major said “We realize that most of our exclusively online students are professionals who cannot afford the time to go to a college campus. While not all of our classes are offered internationally, there are students overseas, one in Guam, for instance.”
She said online programs came around when LSU realized online classes offered students a means of higher education that would let them work around their own schedules in a way traditional degree paths did not allow.
The online programs differ from traditional degree paths at the University in the way they are accessed and taken. While some aspects of traditional learning, such as group work, are present in online courses, the method of asynchronous teaching used to teach students is an entirely different way of teaching, Major said. The online class relies heavily on reading and audio/video components.
“Teachers on campus lean more toward the traditional way of teaching through lectures,” Major said. “When I was teaching online, I had optional synchronous meetings for students that wanted to have a more traditional learning experience. I would then upload that meeting to Moodle for students that could not be present.”
The term for online degree paths lasts seven weeks and runs throughout the year, Major said, but the education students enrolled will receive is up to the same University standards. Students enrolled usually only take one or two classes over the course of a term, and program coordinators act as advisers to tell students what order they should take classes.
“The intensity and quality of education remains the same, but the terms are more condensed. For some of our programs … students can get their degree in six to 12 months depending on the credit hours you come in with,” Major said. “The degrees that students are getting online are the same as those who go the traditional route in college.”
LSU Online also is in charge of classes with online components, Major said. The department recently shifted its focus to creating a better online experience that benefits students and faculty in charge of the classes.
“We wanted to give faculty the support they need as well as what the students need to have high quality online learning and engaging experiences,” Major said.
Looking to the future, Major said LSU Online is hoping to expand programs for in-demand and niche degrees in the future, like the new Master of Arts in education with specialization in educational technology program, slated to start next year on March 7, 2016.