Thought Leaders in Online Education: Kurt Kirstein, Dean of School of Management, City University of Seattle (Part 6)

Sramana Mitra: Is there any other major trend in online education that you are observing that is worth discussing?

Kurt Kirstein: We’ve talked about online education from an academic perspective. The one thing that I’m also seeing is that online education is now being utilized more and more for corporate training. We’ve done online corporate training quite often. What we’re seeing more and more is the online model being offered by training companies and universities. There’s a reason why this could really be a much bigger force than it is. >>>

Building to $10 Million in EdTech: Panopto CTO Eric Burns (Part 2)

Eric Burns: I got to work on some interesting things like building a search engine from scratch, designing a large-scale storage system, and building a UI—basically, building an entire system from the ground-up. One of the other projects that I got involved in, even as early as 1998, was capturing lectures in a classroom. CMU [Carnegie Mellon University] is a teaching institution where a lot of great presentations are given every day. Initially, e-commerce wanted to experiment with online class delivery. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Kurt Kirstein, Dean of School of Management, City University of Seattle (Part 5)

Sramana Mitra: This discussion is interesting in terms of paradigms of how online learning is going to progress. This is the paradigm that is going to be desirable across the board. It also helps people engage better when you have a combination of self service which offers flexibility and then you have the interactive session which simulates the experience of working with instructors in real time. That captures all the different best practices that human beings need to learn. That’s my assessment. Is that in synch with what you’re thinking? >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Kurt Kirstein, Dean of School of Management, City University of Seattle (Part 4)

Sramana Mitra: What we hear from people is that the flexibility of the web self-service mode curriculum is very attractive to them because it’s something that they can do at their own time. Many of our entrepreneurs are practicing entrepreneurs. They will do the curriculum at their own time. In any case, the flexibility is very attractive. I imagine that is the case in your audience as well because they are working professionals. But there are now technologies to do interactive stuff online as well with actual instructors. That brings the online teaching experience full circle.

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Kurt Kirstein, Dean of School of Management, City University of Seattle (Part 3)

Sramana Mitra: You’re saying that once they get their feet wet in the online program, they prefer the convenience and the flexibility of the online class?

Kurt Kirstein: They do. I think they perceive the value of it. Many of the students who come to us went to school. The last time they went to school, they were in class with the professor face-to-face. That’s what they know and that’s what they’re used to. Many resist online when it’s offered to them as an option because it’s not what they’re comfortable with. By giving them a taste of it and requiring them to participate in an online environment, many of them become much more comfortable with it and they migrate to online on their own. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Kurt Kirstein, Dean of School of Management, City University of Seattle (Part 2)

Kurt Kirstein: They’re looking to finish a degree or looking for career advancement. That’s the primary market that we serve. In that sense, we don’t serve freshmen. We don’t have freshmen that come in in droves every Fall. We serve people who are working and have decided that they have enough time and it’s a good time in their lives to try to advance their careers or maybe change careers. They come to us to seek those additional skills. What is different about the way we service our students, when compared to a traditional university, is that we focus heavily on a practitioner faculty model. >>>

Thought Leaders in Online Education: Kurt Kirstein, Dean of School of Management, City University of Seattle (Part 1)

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This discussion focuses on online education models that maximize engagement and minimize drop rates.

Sramana Mitra: Kurt, let’s start with introducing our audience to yourself as well as to what you’re doing at City University of Seattle.

Kurt Kirstein: I am currently the Dean in the School of Management at the City University of Seattle. The School of Management is in control of all of our business programs, all of the business related programs, and we also incorporate the technology programs with the Technology Institute at the University. I have been at City University of Seattle for about eight years of which I have been the Dean for seven years.

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Thought Leaders in Online Education: Sean Brown, SVP of Education, Sonic Foundry (Part 7)

Sramana Mitra: I’m not doing the research. Somebody who knows better than I do is curating or providing that content and the education that I need. Essentially at that point, it’s an online university of its own style. I think that’s what’s going to happen at each of the university levels as well as there will be private business versions of each category like all the companies that we described. We fall in that online education category as well. Somebody is doing the curation, somebody is guaranteeing the quality of the learning. People are trusting that brand and becoming a member of that brand. >>>