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A
distance learning first at BU
Metropolitan College offers online master's program in criminal justice
By David J. Craig
Daniel LeClair was skeptical about distance learning prior to teaching
an online course about white-collar crime at BU's Metropolitan College
this summer. What incentive, he wondered, do students have to become engaged
with material when their only contact with a professor is by e-mail? And
how does a teacher accurately gauge students' learning in a totally electronic
environment?
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Daniel LeClair, a Metropolitan College professor and chairman of criminal justice, urban affairs, and city planning programs, helped launch MET's online master's degree program in criminal justice this summer. Photo by Kalman Zabarsky |
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But LeClair, a MET professor and chairman of criminal justice, urban
affairs, and city planning programs, "became a convert" to distance
learning, he says, while grading the students' essay-heavy midterm exam
in June. The course was the initial offering of MET's new online master's
program in criminal justice - the first purely online degree program at
BU.
"I expected the students' level of learning to be below that of students
in a conventional course, but that wasn't the case at all," says
LeClair. "The students in the online course were extremely invested
in the material. It was clear thatthey weren't simply reiterating things
they had read, but that they had spent a lot of time thinking very deeply
about them."
Consisting of nine six-week courses broken down into two courses each
semester, the online master's program is designed to meet the needs of
criminal justice professionals who want to advance their careers but do
not live near a major university or have a work schedule that allows them
to take a conventional course. About 120 students are currently enrolled
in the program, which offers courses on subjects such as youth crime,
deviant theory, the history of criminal justice, and statistics and research
methods. New students can enroll at any time because the program's requirements
do not have to be completed in a particular order.
Each course features two written lectures a week, which students read
by logging on to the course's Web site as their schedule allows. The material,
however, is posted on the Web for only a few days, so students will keep
up with the work. The lectures are peppered with directions to read passages
from other texts, including a course textbook, to watch supplementary
visuals such as video clips on the Web site, or to complete short writing
assignments. Each lecture is designed to take about three hours to complete;
students then are quizzed on the material and given short writing assignments,
which are turned in by e-mail.
Unlike distance learning courses offered by many other institutions, "online
courses at BU don't create a passive experience where a student is simply
sitting back and reading text or watching a streamed lecture," says
Susan Kryczka, director of BU Interactive, the University's office of
distance learning. "The courses in the online criminal justice program
are multifaceted and tap in to the different ways that people learn -
by reading, hearing, seeing, and writing."
Calvin Chang, a patrolman with the University of California-Davis Police
Department, entered the program because he wanted to learn more about
the sociological aspects of hate crimes, his investigation specialty.
His work schedule is too unpredictable, however, for him to take a regular
course.
"I found that the online course really forces you to focus on every
topic area because there is so much writing involved when all your communication
is by e-mail," says Chang. "We turned in about four small writing
assignments every week, and we'd have to have two other students read
and comment on them first."
The impetus in launching the program, says MET Dean Jay Halfond, was to
"leapfrog over" the numerous criminal justice programs in the
Boston area by tapping in to the brightest students nationwide. Current
students include FBI and CIA agents, military personnel, and police officers
from as far away as Alaska. A key to the program's success, he says, will
be "building a sense of affiliation and community" among students.
Toward that end, students are expected to participate in online chat sessions,
where the professor or a teaching assistant asks questions and monitors
the subsequent e-mail discussions among the students who log in. In this
summer's white-collar crime course, LeClair also asked students to divide
into several smaller discussion groups with those nearest them geographically
or whose line of work was most similar. Those groups periodically were
required to discuss assignments online, and LeClair could later read the
transcripts.
"These law enforcement officers were actually helping each other
by e-mail to solve cases they were working on," says LeClair. "It
was all extremely interesting, but I just had to remind them to relate
it back to the theoretical material being discussed."
MET, which is part of BU's Division of Extended Education and focuses
on adult education, will launch one new online program every year, according
to Halfond.
To learn more about MET's online master's degree program in criminal justice, visit http://www.bu.edu/met. To learn more about other distance learning courses and programs at BU, visit http://www.bu.edu/interactive.
6 September 2002
Boston University
Office of University Relations