1. Future of Online Education in USA
Dr. Jeyakesavan Veerasamy
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.

2. Agenda Self-introduction Online education: brief history
Current state of “online education”
Online education – best practices
Future of online education
Future of traditional education

3. 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.

4. 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?

5. Snippets from history
First online course in 1984?
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!

6. 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

7. 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.

8. Grading Scale: Traditional vs. Online
Category
Traditional
Online
Participation
5% (extra)
25%
Quiz/Attendance
10%
Assignments
40%
30%
Exams
50% -
Final project
Team assignment

9. Interactions in Traditional vs. Online classroom

10. Traditional vs. Online course load
7 weeks
14 weeks
Course 3
Course 4
7 weeks
Effort
Effort

11. 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.

12. 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…

13. 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….

14. 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.

15. 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.

16. Thanks for attending! Questions & Answers
Dr. Jeyakesavan Veerasamy