Amy West, administrative assistant in marketing and communications, does homework for her Advanced Technological Education degree on her lunch hour.

Online degree program delivers coursework to students' desktops

A Buddhist saying goes “The teacher will appear when the student is ready.” If the Advanced Technological Education degree program at BGSU is any indication, the “teacher” is appearing for a growing number of students.

ATE is an online, degree-completion program aimed at adults who have an applied associate degree and work experience in business, industry or education. The program, a collaboration between the College of Technology and Interactive Distance Education for All Learners (IDEAL), Continuing and Extended Education’s distance education unit, represents a natural evolution from the previous program, which used interactive video and required students to come to a central location for class.

“It enables us to offer a College of Technology degree to working adults who can’t come to Bowling Green,” said faculty member Bonnie Fink, visual communication and technology education (VCTE). “Typically our students are ages 35-50, with families, and need the four-year degree to advance in their careers. We have everybody from firefighters, radiation therapists and information technology specialists to people who work in heating and air conditioning and the tool and die business, for example."

The strength of the degree was a factor in BGSU’s recent accreditation for distance learning through the Higher Learning Commission of the North Central Association of Colleges and Schools. Online coursework is tied into the standard learning outcomes of the University with the same expectations of students, Fink said. Critical thinking, research, writing and problem solving are incorporated in the online courses just as they are in traditional classes, she explained.

Dr. Bruce Edwards, associate dean for distance education, noted, “The ATE program serves as a good model for other online degree-completion programs here at BGSU.”

"Everyone knows BGSU for its really good undergraduate programs," Fink added. "I hope now they will know us as having high-quality distance education programs.”

The program is designed to allow students to transfer easily with an associate degree. Articulation agreements with other colleges have been developed, and students telecommute from many counties in Ohio. Others participate from as far away as California and Georgia.

“Through distance learning we can provide more Ohioans the opportunity to earn a bachelor’s degree,” Fink said. Courses run throughout the year, and students may enter the program at any point. There are about 180 students enrolled now, taught by five faculty members and a doctoral student.

Dr. William Balzer, dean of Continuing and Extended Education, gives much of the credit for the program to Larry Hatch, chair of the VCTE department, and Edwards, in addition to the participating faculty.

The ATE curriculum includes 10 core courses from the College of Technology. Depending on what their associate degree programs' curriculum, students select from a number of online general education classes to round out their studies and meet the University’s bachelor’s degree requirements. Because ATE is a technology degree, co-ops are required, but since the students are already working, that is easily arranged, Fink said.

With students in so many different fields of work, the online discussions can become very lively, participants said, with everyone bringing his or her perspective to the topic and sharing examples from individual areas of expertise. The program uses Blackboard for discussion; students post their comments to a discussion forum and submit papers to a “digital drop box.”

Several BGSU staff are enrolled in the program, which allows students to work from home, at their own pace, taking as many or as few classes as they can manage at a time. Amy West, administrative assistant in marketing and communications, varies her courseload to accommodate family and work demands, sometimes taking only one and other times two courses per semester.

Kerry Foster, administrative secretary to Executive Vice President Linda Dobb, aims to complete her ATE degree by December.

Kerry Foster, administrative secretary to Executive Vice President Linda Dobb, on the other hand, is eager to finish her degree by December and is taking three classes this semester. “I have young children who still go to bed early, so I can work at night and on weekends,” she said. “I feel that having that bachelor’s degree will open so many doors to me, even here at the University. It just makes sense, if you’re working at a university, to take advantage of all it has to offer.”

Rhonda Hogrefe, a personnel technician in Human Resources, said the flexibility of the program has worked perfectly for her. As an active community member with two part-time jobs in addition to her University position, her free time is limited. “Having the College of Technology working with Continuing Education—that’s the combination that makes this work,” she said. “I think a lot of people in the program are doing something we’ve wanted to do for a long time and finishing something we didn’t have time to finish before.”

She is also a prime example of the “teacher appearing” theory: One day she took a phone call at Human Resources from someone asking about the ATE program, and, in helping the caller learn about it, “I found the answer to what I needed.”

Like other ATE students, she said the required classes in adult learning styles, technological systems in society, computer-mediated communication and transformational learning and technical change have proved both helpful and applicable to her job.

“This lends itself to what I do,” she said. “I love working with Human Resources, the University’s Career Center and Student Services. The classes give us insight into how people think, how we work as a group and how technology affects our jobs, our perceptions and our thought processes. For instance, how is PeopleSoft going to impact the University?”

Fink noted that a goal of the program is to help students learn to be leaders in technological change.
Kenneth McCreight, a 53-year-old program manager and instructor in applied industrial technology at Cuyahoga Community College, said that after 20 years of teaching and developing coursework and curricula, he had come to the realization that “there’s always something more to learn. But I wanted to learn it from people with my background in technology. The BGSU program has been fabulous. I love the faculty there. My adviser, Bur Shilling, has been excellent, as have my instructors Dave Heiser and Jim Bradford.”

Like several others in the program, he says he plans to go on for a master’s degree.

ATE reflects society’s advancing technological involvement, Hogrefe noted. “From banking to bill paying to manufacturing—it’s all technology-driven today. I hope through getting this degree we can help people open themselves up to change so that when it happens they can be right there with it or even ahead of it.”