I’ve heard some news that Missouri State’s CIS program is being transitioned into an all-online degree, by order of the Provost (yes, with a capital P). This is alarming, and I’ll tell you why: I’m a CIS major who’s had a few total-online classes (I’m not talking about the blended courses) in the degree, and they have been far less than satisfactory, to put it nicely.

Instruction is difficult when it comes to teaching a database course online. I understand that. So why have it online? In conferring with the others in my online class(es), they’d much rather have some sort of session where we meet in class part of the time, and turn in assignments online. Course instruction would make more sense to us students that way. Either way, I’m not bitching about one or two classes that don’t work out online. I’m upset for the students that will have to take their entire degree online in this manner. There are some courses that are being taught online well, and there are some that are sad excuses for online classes. Instead of transitioning the entire CIS degree into an online course, why don’t we examine how students feel about the current online classes given and improve on those first? Otherwise, we’re going to have this whole major where students have no idea what’s going on.

I think I’ve lost all the fury I had stored up about this since originally hearing about it a couple of weeks ago. But the bottom line is still there: let’s improve our existing program first, and then work to make it more accessible to students outside of the university (and charging them double per credit hour). Unless, of course, all the university cares about is making tons and tons of money. And in that case (the likely one) it seems like the customers, the students, are quickly losing their buying power. And the university is going in whatever-the-hell direction the Provost herself chooses.