UMUC: Online vs On Site?

Anyone here have any experience with UMUC's online and on site? I'm wondering if it would be wise to move to Maryland to attend their campuses or if I should just do the online program? (I am planning on getting my graduate degree in Accounting and Information Systems)

 

I took graduate classes both on-site and online with UMUC between 2009 and 2011. I took four classes face to face at College Park (2 in the Math Building, and 2 in Hornbake Library), and everything else online. I don't think you would have the choice to take all of your classes on-site; UMUC does not offer all graduate courses face to face to my knowledge. For me, I took the only four courses in my program (MS Technology Management & MBA) that I could take in person. Every other course was only offered online.

Personally, the only advantages from the on-site courses was easy access to the professor, and I have noticed that I have kept in better touch with my classmates from those courses. The syllabus for on-site and online courses are the same, and you still utilize WebTycho for onsite courses (UMUC's online course software). I'm not sure it is worth moving to Maryland just to attend the classes, though. Academically you will get the same out of both methods of delivery, unless you have a personal preference or find face to face lecturing a better way for you to learn. You still interact quite a lot with students and your professor in the online delivery.

 

Thank you very much !

 

Stay away!

Here is my story. I have a BA and MS from a b&m. I want to finish another degree in CS. I work for the federal government which has a program that reduces tuition at UMUC and other predominately online schools. I attended UMUC in the Spring. My class had four programming projects and a final project. There were no tests (proctored or not). The programming projects were painfully easy and the final project was also a cakewalk. I got an 'A' in the class, but I didn't feel like I worked the slightest bit for it.

Although I only need 9 more courses and the tuition is affordable, I will never attend another UMUC class. I would only recommend this 'university' to students that don't want any type of challenge but need the paper that states they have a degree. I use the word 'degree' loosely. Perhaps UMUC was a better school when it administered proctored exams, but I definitely understand why the president was removed from her position as UMUC is not a university.

 

Stay away! I took a programming class there this Spring. There were 4 small projects (150 lines of code) and a final project (400 lines of code). All were high school level stuff and were not challenging in the least. I got an 'A' with about 10 hours of programming work and 10 hours of discussion participation. There are no tests.

Although I could finish a CS degree with 9 more classes, a degree from UMUC wouldn't be worth it. If UMUC stays on this trajectory it will dilute its reputation and will be seen as a degree mill. Maybe removal of the UMUC president will help them get back on track. At the very least, they should get back to administering proctored exams and make the student's work a little more.

 

You're saying that a school can near achieve the level of degree mill simply by offering an undergraduate course in programming that you found easy? That's a bit harsh.

Hopefully you can find an undergraduate DL CS program that meets your rigor requirements and uses proctored exams. If you're in Maryland, live near Baltimore, and you want to go to a Maryland school; Towson offers evening classes for their BS in Computer Science. It is not DL, but you will at least be proctored.

 

Just one man's opinion. I have no skin in this game. I really wanted to like UMUC because I only had to complete a few classes and it was relatively inexpensive. However, the class I took should not be considered a college level class. If UMUC starts churning out students that took classes like this, the reputation of UMUC will be represented by these types of students when they are looking for jobs. If I currently held a UMUC degree, I would be very vocal of the school to try to keep some of the degree's value intact.

Nuff said.

 

My wife finished her bachelor's through UMUC while we lived in England and took classes in a mix online classes, butt-in-seat classes at the local military bases, and field studies at locations throughout Europe.

She had zero issues using the degree for employment and grad school entry when we moved back to the States.