Georgia Tech Online Master of Science in Computer Science

Last updated
Georgia Tech Online Master of Science in Computer Science
Type Distance education
EstablishedMay 13, 2013
Parent institution
Georgia Tech College of Computing
Academic staff
Zvi Galil
Students11,923 [1]
Location,
Website omscs.gatech.edu

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 was launched in 2014 in partnership with Udacity and AT&T and delivered through the massive open online course (MOOC) format. [2] Georgia Tech has received attention for offering an online 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] [5] The program has been recognized by the University Professional and Continuing Education Association, Fast Company , and the Reimagine Education Awards for excellence and innovation. [6] [7] [8]

Contents

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] OMSCS is delivered through the massive open online course format and is designed to deliver instructional content and academic support via the massive open online course format. [2] [3] [9] The current Dean of Computing, Charles Isbell, helped lead the effort to launch the program as then-senior associate dean. [4]

As of Fall 2021, the program has 11,923 enrolled students located in 120 countries. [10] It admits all applicants deemed to possess a reasonable chance of successabout 74% of the approximately 50,000 applicants to datewhich is significantly higher than the university’s on-campus graduate admissions rate. [10] From its creation in 2014 until the end of the Fall 2022, the program has graduated over 8,500 students with 928 degrees awarded in Fall 2022. [10] 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. [11]

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". [12] [13]

Curriculum and culture

As of Spring 2023, the online master's program currently offers 58 courses and five specializationsComputational Perception and Robotics, Computing Systems, Human-Computer Interaction, Interactive Intelligence, and Machine Learning. [14] [15] [16]

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] [17]

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. [18]

Due to the online format of the program, social media has played a significant role in the development of robust student communities. [19] [20] 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. [21] Jill has since been adapted for use in non-computer science courses, as well. [22]

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. [23]

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. [24]

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. [25] [26] The program was the recipient of University Professional and Continuing Education Association’s Outstanding Program Award in the credit category. [6] [27] OMSCS was also cited as the reason Georgia Tech was named to Fast Company’s 2017 list of Most Innovative Companies in the Worldthe third university so named and the first for work in the education sector. [7] 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. [8] In July 2020, in her popular newsletter, Dr. Barbara Oakley called the program "the most significant leap forward in higher education of recent decades". [28] In December 2020, OMSCS was featured in an interview Zvi Galil gave to Academic Influence. [29] In April 2021, The Wall Street Journal reported on the program's success, naming Galil "the man who made online college work", and the magazine of the Marconi Society featured OMSCS. [30] [31] In July 2021, OMSCS was featured by Forbes and by a Wiley podcast. [32] [33]

Other online degrees in Georgia Tech

The program has proved to be a model for other online degrees. [34] Georgia Tech itself has launched two additional online master's degrees which offer courses cross-listed with OMSCS: one in Analytics and one in Cybersecurity. The online master’s initiative has spurred Georgia Tech to adapt several undergraduate Computer Science courses to MOOC courses, including Introduction to Python Programming, Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming with Java, and Data Structures & Algorithms. [35]

Similar initiatives

Other universities have followed suit with more affordable MOOC-based online master programs, starting with the iMBA program at the University of Illinois. So far, more than 30 universities have followed in the footsteps of Georgia Tech, creating over 70 such programs. [36] [37]

Related Research Articles

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing</span>

The College of Computing is a college of the Georgia Institute of Technology, a public research university in Atlanta, Georgia. It is divided into four schools: the School of Computer Science, the School of Interactive Computing, the School of Computational Science & Engineering, and the School of Cybersecurity and Privacy. The College of Computing's programs are consistently ranked among the top 10 computing programs in the nation. In 2022, U.S. News & World Report ranked the Computer Science graduate program #6 in the U.S. In 2016, Times Higher Education and the Wall Street Journal ranked the College #5 in the world.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Zvi Galil</span> Israeli mathematician and computer scientist

Zvi Galil is an Israeli-American computer scientist and mathematician. Galil served as the president of Tel Aviv University from 2007 through 2009. From 2010 to 2019, he was the dean of the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing. His research interests include the design and analysis of algorithms, computational complexity and cryptography. He has been credited with coining the terms stringology and sparsification. He has published over 200 scientific papers and is listed as an ISI highly cited researcher.

James David Foley is an American computer scientist and computer graphics researcher. He is a Professor Emeritus and held the Stephen Fleming Chair in Telecommunications in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology. He was Interim Dean of Georgia Tech's College of Computing from 2008–2010. He is perhaps best known as the co-author of several widely used textbooks in the field of computer graphics, of which over 400,000 copies are in print and translated in ten languages. Foley most recently conducted research in instructional technologies and distance education.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Amy S. Bruckman</span> American professor (born 1965)

Amy Susan Bruckman is a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology affiliated with the School of Interactive Computing and the GVU Center. She is best known for her pioneering research in the fields of online communities and the learning sciences. In 1999, she was selected as one of MIT Technology Review's TR100 awardees, honoring 100 remarkable innovators under the age of 35.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Mark Guzdial</span>

Mark Joseph Guzdial is a Professor in the College of Engineering at the University of Michigan. He was formerly a professor in the School of Interactive Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology affiliated with the College of Computing and the GVU Center. He has conducted research in the fields of computer science education and the learning sciences and internationally in the field of Information Technology. From 2001–2003, he was selected to be an ACM Distinguished Lecturer, and in 2007 he was appointed Vice-Chair of the ACM Education Board Council. He was the original developer of the CoWeb, one of the earliest wiki engines, which was implemented in Squeak and has been in use at institutions of higher education since 1998. He is the inventor of the Media Computation approach to learning introductory computing, which uses contextualized computing education to attract and retain students.

The School of Interactive Computing is an academic unit located within the College of Computing at the Georgia Institute of Technology. It conducts both research and teaching activities related to interactive computing at the undergraduate and graduate levels. These activities focus on computing's interaction with users and the environment, as well as how computers impact the quality of people's lives.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Computer science education</span> Pedagogy of computer science

Computer science education or computing education is the field of teaching and learning the discipline of computer science, and computational thinking. The field of computer science education encompasses a wide range of topics, from basic programming skills to advanced algorithm design and data analysis. It is a rapidly growing field that is essential to preparing students for careers in the technology industry and other fields that require computational skills.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">G. P. "Bud" Peterson</span> American mechanical engineer and university administrator

George Paul "Bud" Peterson is the former president of the Georgia Institute of Technology. Peterson is a graduate of Kansas State University, where he earned B.S. degrees in Mechanical Engineering and Mathematics and an M.S. in Engineering, and Texas A&M University, where he earned a Ph.D. in mechanical engineering. On January 7, 2019, Peterson announced his upcoming retirement from Georgia Tech, effective summer of 2019. His successor, Ángel Cabrera, assumed the office September 1, 2019, after serving for seven years as president of George Mason University in Fairfax, Virginia. In September 2019, the University System of Georgia Board of Regents voted to name Peterson President Emeritus and Regents Professor of Mechanical Engineering for the standard three-year term. The Board of Regents also awarded him tenure.

A Bachelor of Science in Information Technology,, is a bachelor's degree awarded for an undergraduate program in the information technology. The degree is normally required in order to work in the Information technology industry.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Jennifer Widom</span> American computer scientist

Jennifer Widom is an American computer scientist known for her work in database systems and data management. She is notable for foundational contributions to semi-structured data management and data stream management systems. Since 2017, Widom is the dean of the School of Engineering and professor of computer science at Stanford University. Her honors include the Fletcher Jones Professor of Computer Science and multiple lifetime achievement awards from the Association for Computing Machinery.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Massive open online course</span> Education service on the web

A massive open online course or an open online course is an online course aimed at unlimited participation and open access via the Web. In addition to traditional course materials, such as filmed lectures, readings, and problem sets, many MOOCs provide interactive courses with user forums or social media discussions to support community interactions among students, professors, and teaching assistants (TAs), as well as immediate feedback to quick quizzes and assignments. MOOCs are a widely researched development in distance education, first introduced in 2008, that emerged as a popular mode of learning in 2012, a year called the "Year of the MOOC".

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Udacity</span> For-profit educational organization

Udacity, Inc. is an American for-profit educational organization founded by Sebastian Thrun, David Stavens, and Mike Sokolsky offering massive open online courses.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Coursera</span> Online education technology company

Coursera Inc. is a U.S.-based massive open online course provider founded in 2012 by Stanford University computer science professors Andrew Ng and Daphne Koller. Coursera works with universities and other organizations to offer online courses, certifications, and degrees in a variety of subjects. In 2023 more than 275+ universities and companies offer more than 4,000 courses through Coursera.

edX Online education provider

edX is an American for-profit online education platform owned by 2U since 2021. The platform's main focus is to manage a variety of offerings, including elite brand bootcamps.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">2U (company)</span> Education technology company

2U, Inc. is an American educational technology company that contracts with non-profit colleges and universities to build, deliver and support online degree and non-degree programs. It is also the parent company of edX.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Irfan Essa</span>

Irfan Aziz Essa is a professor in the School of Interactive Computing of the College of Computing, and adjunct professor in the School of Electrical and Computer Engineering at the Georgia Institute of Technology. He is an associate dean in Georgia Tech's College of Computing and the director of the new Interdisciplinary Research Center for Machine Learning at Georgia Tech (ML@GT).

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Rob A. Rutenbar</span> American academic

Rob A. Rutenbar is an American academic noted for contributions to software tools that automate analog integrated circuit design, and custom hardware platforms for high-performance automatic speech recognition. He is Senior Vice Chancellor for Research at the University of Pittsburgh, where he leads the university's strategic and operational vision for research and innovation.

The School of Literature, Media, and Communication (LMC) is one of six units of the Ivan Allen College of Liberal Arts at the Georgia Institute of Technology. The School focuses primarily on interdisciplinary approaches to the humanities, social sciences, and science/technology to provide "Humanistic Perspectives in a Technological World."

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Ashok Goel</span> Indian-American computer scientist

Ashok K. Goel is a professor of computer science and human-centered computing in the School of Interactive Computing at Georgia Institute of Technology, and the chief scientist with Georgia Tech's Center for 21st Century Universities. He conducts research into cognitive systems at the intersection of artificial intelligence and cognitive science with a focus on computational design and creativity. Goel is also the executive director of National Science Foundation's AI Institute for Adult Learning and Online Education and an editor emeritus of AAAI's AI Magazine.

<span class="mw-page-title-main">Charles Lee Isbell Jr.</span> American computationalist, researcher, and educator

Charles Lee Isbell Jr. is an American computationalist, researcher, and educator. He is Provost and Vice Chancellor for Academic Affairs at the University of Wisconsin–Madison. Before joining the faculty there, he was a professor at the Georgia Institute of Technology College of Computing starting in 2002, and served as John P. Imlay, Jr. Dean of the College from July 2019 to July 2023. His research interests focus on machine learning and artificial intelligence, particularly interactive and human-centered AI. He has published over 100 scientific papers. In addition to his research work, Isbell has been an advocate for increasing access to and diversity in higher education.

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