Thought Leaders in Online Education: Sher Downing, Executive Director of Online Academic Services at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: You said you have students taking your program internationally. Can you talk a bit more about where and what are the trends on that front?

Sher Downing: We have two types of international students. One is those who are obviously living overseas. We also have students who travel quite a bit extensively for their work. For people who live and are based somewhere else, once we get connected with them or work out any issues in terms of where they’re located, they’re pretty much set to go throughout their program.

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Sher Downing, Executive Director of Online Academic Services at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: What about examining and testing? Especially, where you’re running full-fledged online programs, how do you handle testing?

Sher Downing: We have actually been trying out a number of products in the last year and have purposely focused on avoiding issues of plagiarism and any type of cheating. We pride ourselves, on carrying the Carey name, on ethics. We teach ethics to all of our students, obviously. We work with companies that provide software that does make it very difficult, if not almost impossible, to cheat on an exam. We do look at what we have to use to ensure all of our student body is doing the right thing and that everyone is earning their grade and place based on their knowledge and effort.

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Sher Downing, Executive Director of Online Academic Services at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: I’m going to switch to a different topic. Our audience is entrepreneurs. Talk to me about what you are doing in the realm of entrepreneurship education – first at the undergraduate level and then at the graduate level.

Sher Downing: We currently have an undergraduate degree in Entrepreneurship and that includes coursework that allows them to work on tested ideas. We are in the process of rolling out our new Entrepreneurship Center. That will allow for more showcasing of those pieces. It also allows them to learn from each other.

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Sher Downing, Executive Director of Online Academic Services at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University (Part 3)

Sher Downing: One of the things that we do is have all tenured full-time faculty teach our online classes. So you get the same award-winning faculty online that you would get if you came in to take a course. We have surveyed the students and monitored the course just to see what the students enjoy. Over the last two years, we’ve seen an increase in the use of mobile devices. People want the ability to access things easily through mobile devices. We have made an effort to offer online lectures that they can also download as an MP3 or MP4. What we have found from student feedback is that many times they listen to it on a first run while they’re commuting. Then, they go home and watch the video a second time -particularly if it’s a type of application that has to show them steps on how to do something.

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Sher Downing, Executive Director of Online Academic Services at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University (Part 2)

Sramana Mitra: When people are working on these online programs – specifically, we are interested in understanding your online offering – are they doing online only program or is everything an online/offline combination?

Sher Downing: Our online programs offer a real breadth of flexibility and ability to learn within a capsulated calendar. Students, at the graduate level, will take one course at a time. One course will be five weeks long. Within those five weeks, they do have certain deadlines each week that they have to meet for submitting case studies and working in a team environment. Within that, they have the flexibility of working on their materials as it fits into their lifestyle. For example, they may have a deadline on Friday. How they complete the coursework by Friday is truly up to them. If they want to work on it during the day, they can. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Sher Downing, Executive Director of Online Academic Services at the W.P. Carey School of Business at Arizona State University (Part 1)

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Much is changing in the world of education. Universities are becoming large scale providers in online learning. Arizona State University is at the fore of this trend, running one of the largest business programs online.

Sramana Mitra: Sher, let’s start with introducing our audience to yourself as well as to what’s happening at the Business School at Arizona State University.

Sher Downing: The W.P. Carey School of Business, which is at Arizona State University, is one of the largest business schools in the nation. This year, we have around 11,000 students in various business tracks that are both face-to-face as well as online. We also have some pure online degrees that we are doing across the globe. We focus on developing the ideal that business is personal. We want people to come out of our school with a real sense of entrepreneurship and ability to do a lot of different things in their lives. >>>

Venture Capital in Slow Growth Markets: India, EdTech, Cleantech

There are a number of relatively slow growth markets in which we do a lot of business: India and EdTech are two examples. These are also two markets that I am passionate about, and have covered prodigiously for a long time. In a way, these markets, and many others that have similar characteristics, share very similar trajectories vis-a-vis entrepreneurship, venture capital, and exits. Another market in which 1M/1M doesn’t have much presence, but I have invested in, is Cleantech. The story is somewhat similar there as well. Let’s take a look at these slow-growth markets, and how they will emerge over the upcoming years.

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Are We In A Golden Age Of EdTech?

John Doerr would like the world to believe yes.

Speaking with Betsy Corcoran of edSurge, Doerr expresses his enthusiasm:

What makes this moment “transitional” for learning, Doerr says, is the fact that so much of the technology now getting applied to learning and schools already pervades the rest of our lives.

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