In pursuit of degrees, online and off campus

By Cheryl B. Wilson, Staff Writer, Daily Hampshire Gazette
Monday, March 1

AMHERST - Call him the traveling professor. Each Wednesday afternoon Robert Nakosteen packs up his teaching gear in Amherst and heads for Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, where he is one of several professors in the off-campus MBA program.

Nakosteen is a finance and operational management professor in the Isenberg School of Management at the University of Massachusetts, where he teaches graduate-level courses. In past years he has also taught UMass classes in Westborough and Pittsfield - and he is one of the pioneering professors in online education at UMass.

The School of Management offers part-time MBA programs off-campus to hundreds of adults already working in the business world. Nearly every management professor teaches at least one course off-campus.

The School of Education has offered off-campus classes since the early 1970s and the School of Nursing has led the way in developing online master's degree programs.

Nakosteen is a highly regarded professor of finance and operations management who is a regular contributor to Benchmarks, the monthly UMass report on the state economy.

Different kind of teaching

Preparing to teach off-campus is very different from sprinting down the stairs to an Isenberg classroom, Nakosteen said.

''I take my office with me,'' he said. ''About halfway down to Springfield I panic that I have left something at home. You really have to come equipped,'' he said.

Teaching online is also a special challenge, he added. ''I can see somebody panic in the classroom. I can't see the panic online. I tell them even if they have a hint of a problem, let me know. I never let a question go unanswered for more than a day.''

Nakosteen added that online education isn't for everybody. ''People who are predisposed to being good readers take Web courses. If students are not comfortable about that, they will make their way into a physical classroom.''

Off-campus courses are becoming ever more popular, said Heather Miller, associate director of MBA programs at the School of Management. ''We have 750 people this semester in off-campus courses including about 500 online,'' she said.

Each semester Isenberg offers six to eight management courses at Baystate Medical Center in Springfield, this year with about 250 students enrolled. Another 50 or 60 take classes at the I-495 center in Westborough and yet another 20 to 40 are at the Berkshire Medical Center in Pittsfield, she said. The Pittsfield program is often a feeder into the online courses, Nakosteen added.

The management school offers 11 classes entirely online, she added. ''In our experience students are mixing and matching sites. They are taking accounting live and marketing online.''

Online courses are increasingly popular in many departments, said Linda Lowry, director of continuing education on campus.

''Online education is the hottest topic in higher education,'' Lowry said. ''It's a global market once you go online. I teach an online course in travel and tourism with students from China, Germany, Singapore and all over the United States.'' Miller said management students from across the country take courses online.

The depth of discussion online is astounding,'' Miller said. ''It's not only about coursework but also about careers, life interests, hobbies.'' She said students make friends through their online courses, just as they do in face-to-face classes on campus.

Ed school online

The School of Education also offers online classes but concentrates some of its efforts on taking professors to the school districts. It enrolls more than 300 students off campus and online.

The ed school's Integrated Day program, based on a British education theory, was first offered in the Hilltowns in 1970 and has moved on to Orange and Holyoke and now to South Hadley for the past 10 years, said director Masha Rudman of the School of Education.

Almost all the participants in the regional program are working teachers who take the master's degree classes at the end of their teaching day.

''I think what's wonderful with collaborating with the community in this way is we do respond to what the teachers tell us they need,'' Rudman said. Having an off-campus site makes it easier for them to access the academics that the university has to offer. A number of students tell us they would never be able to get master's degree without this,'' she added.

''This semester we have six courses including music, art, math according to the Massachusetts state frameworks, issues in children's lit, and mask making and how it fits into the curriculum,'' she said.

''Our programs are teacher-friendly, in terms of terms of locality, time and availability,'' said Linda Honan, director of K-12 Academic Outreach at the School of Education.

Some programs are with specific school districts. There are courses to train paraprofessionals to become full teachers, courses to assist teachers and administrators in providing bilingual education and English-as-a-Second-Language programs, an online course for math and science teachers that is statewide, and leadership development programs.

''We are preparing the next generation of education leaders in close collaboration with school superintendents in Springfield, Holyoke and Chicopee,'' said Andrew Effrat, interim dean of the School of Education.