Georgia Tech Designs Its Udacity Pilot to Avoid Failure
Georgia Tech’s cautious approach starts with enrolling students who are likely to succeed. One of the variables that sank San Jose State’s initial experiment with Udacity last spring was including at-risk students in the experimental trials. Courses offered to a broader mix of students during the summer, however, had better outcomes—possibly because more than half of them already held college degrees.
Georgia Tech’s experiment plays it relatively safe. Because it involves a master’s program, the students will have already earned undergraduate degrees, and many of them already have jobs in the industry. And the students who were admitted have an average undergraduate GPA of 3.58.
The inaugural class is also neither massive nor open. The program has admitted 401 students—360 men, 41 women—out of 2,300 candidates. Those who decide to enroll will begin classes on January 15, according to Jason Maderer, a spokesman.
With exacting admissions criteria and an entering class in the low hundreds, Georgia Tech’s collaboration with Udacity seems less like a MOOC than many existing online graduate programs. Other than the low tuition—set at $6,600, a fraction of the price of the university’s face-to-face program—the difference is that these students will have the same experience as the program eventually hopes to deliver to thousands of students at once, said Mr. Peterson.
http://chronicle.com/blogs/wiredcampus/georgia-tech-designs-its-udacity-pilot-to-avoid-failure