King's College London - MA War in the Modern World

Since I myself am interested in the program, I just wanted to pass on the updated info I have received via email on the King's College MA War in Modern World. It looks like they are aiming for a 30 Aug 04 start date and it will be conducted online through the EKeU.

The program prospectus can be found at http://www.kcl.ac.uk/depsta/wsg/prospectus/eprogramme.html

In regards to how the grades will be determined "The course is assessed by continuous assessement, not by timed examination. The pattern is the same for each module and the requirements are as follows:

In each module (except induction and dissertation modules), students are evaluated on the basis of four pieces of assessed work:

· Two 750-word essays (referred to as short answers), each of which represents 15% of the marks for the module;

· One individual report on a group activity (1,500 words), which represents 20%; and

· One 3,000-word essay from the list of essay topics provided, which represents 50%.

For the MA only, students are required to submit a 15,000 word dissertation."

I'll let you all know as I get additional details.

Jon

 

Dissertation

15,000 words is not much. I wrote about a 30,000 word thesis just for my BA in history. My annotated bibliography was 5 pages alone...

 

Man, this is a way cool....

program. If I wasn't otherwise obligated I would do this for grins. Seriously!

 

To my mind, this is exactly the sort of program that lends itself perfectly to DL study. Intensively reading/writing based and, perhaps more importantly, sufficiently esoteric that no one geographic area can consistently supply an adequate number of students. I know you've said this has yet to start but here's two questions that seem critical (to me) :
What about student-teacher, student-student interection?
What about cost?
This sort of program, along with the Wales-Lampeter Anthropology programs are exactly the sort of direction I'd like to see for DL.
Jack

 

The King's College MA in war studies (and its derivatives) is a well established programme. King's College (London - a constituent college of the University of London) has a long running MA in War Studies centred on the The Military College, Shrivenham, now home to the Joint Services Command Course (MOD). Many years ago I taught defence economics on its predecessor courses at its various locations.

Its MA lends itself to a distance mode - many of the all services officers serve on numerous locations (fewer than before!) and after the JSCC tour disperse to them, though they will have completed a course dissertation subject, which they are tutored at distance to raise it to MA standard, with the other elements. This year's photograph of the 2003 MA graduates showed a class that was about double the size of previous years and it must be having an impact of the UK services - and their own careers.

King's College is establishing itself as a leading centre for these programmes and its classes take in civilian post graduates too; and multi-country. I would unhesitatingly recommend this programme to those interested in international security and seeking a reputable MA from an accredited British University.