Georgia Tech Online Master of Science in Computer Science

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] Offered in partnership with Udacity and AT&T, OMSCS is delivered through the massive open online course format and was designed to provide a low-cost, high-quality alternative to traditional master's degree programs by delivering instructional content and academic support via the massive open online course format.[2][3][8] The current Dean of Computing, Charles Isbell, helped lead the effort to launch the program as then-senior associate dean.[4]

As of Spring 2020, the program has over 9,500 enrolled students located in 120 countries.[1] It admits all applicants deemed to possess a reasonable chance of success—about two-thirds of the approximately 30,000 applicants to date—which is significantly higher than the university’s on-campus graduate admissions rate.[1] From its creation in 2014 until the spring semester of 2020, the program has graduated almost 3,500 students and now graduates more than 1,300 students each year, with a retention rate of 70%.[9] 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.[9]

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".[10][11]

The online master's program currently offers 51 courses and four specializations—Computational Perception and Robotics, Computing Systems, Interactive Intelligence, and Machine Learning.[12][13]

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][14]

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. [15]

Due to the online format of the program, social media has played a significant role in the development of robust student communities.[16][17] 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.[18] Jill has since been adapted for use in non-computer science courses, as well.[19]

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.[20]

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.[21]

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.[22][23] The program was the recipient of University Professional and Continuing Education Association’s Outstanding Program Award in the credit category.[5][24] OMSCS was also cited as the reason Georgia Tech was named to Fast Company’s 2017 list of Most Innovative Companies in the World—the third university so named and the first for work in the education sector.[6] 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.[7]

The program has proved to be a model for other online degrees. Georgia Tech itself has launched two additional online master's degrees: one in Analytics and one in Cybersecurity. The online master’s initiative has spurred Georgia Tech to also offer undergraduate courses online, and they now offer three courses: Introduction to Computing; Introduction to Object-Oriented Programming; and Data Structures and Algorithms.[25]

Other universities have followed suit, creating more than 40 online degrees by the spring of 2019.[26][27][28][29] For example, in March 2018, Coursera announced six new, MOOC-based degree programs in collaboration with the University of Michigan, Arizona State University, the University of London, and Imperial College London.[30]