Over 300 attendees joined us for three days of inspiring presentations and engaging discussions at the 2024 Emerging Pedagogies Summit, which explored the theme of Designing and Scaling Transformative Learning For All. Through their work with lifelong learners, LILE staff regularly engage with both the challenges and opportunities these emerging pedagogies present. In this series of Summit reflections, they share with you their major takeaways from each session.
One of the Emerging Pedagogies Summit sessions on Thursday, October 10 was a Fireside chat between Joel Sokol, the Director of the Master of Science in Analytics and the Harold E. Smalley Professor in the H. Milton Stewart School of Industrial and Systems Engineering at Georgia Institute of Technology, and Yakut Gazi, Vice Provost for Learning Innovation and Digital Education at Duke. In this chat, Sokol shared about the inception and growth of the nation’s largest online Master’s Degree in Analytics.
You can watch their chat below:
Sokol’s session really underlines how important access is in education. The online Masters in Analytics program was initially launched in 2017 because there were many students who applied for and were capable of achieving the on-campus degree, but due to capacity constraints the program could not serve all of them. Building on this demand and the market for data science and analytics jobs, the online program was established at a substantially lower tuition price point ($10,000) and they have over 6,000 students currently enrolled (with over 5,000 graduated since 2017). Interestingly, very few of the applicants to the on-campus degree then applied for the new online degree. Instead, an entirely new population of learners was able to access this analytics degree. By creating this online degree, they opened the door to learners from many different countries, at many different stages in their lives and careers, to be able to attain transferable job skills. It’s clear that online degrees are an inevitable and integral part of increasing access to education.
Of course there are many factors to consider when creating online programs, including funding, instructor support, and buy-in from different levels at the university. One point Sokol made during his session was that the team he worked with, including learning design specialists, graphic designers, and video producers, was integral to getting the online courses developed. Fortunately, LILE has multiple folks who are experts in these roles, as well as many other people with expertise and passion for increasing access to education. With all of that expertise, we are fully prepared to pursue our goal of broadening access to education at Duke. However, to truly broaden access to education for everyone, we need to think beyond just access. Getting learners into an online space is the first step, but we must also ensure that those online spaces are inclusive and accessible to all.