San Francisco Chronicle Monday, July 27, 1998

This fall, Stanford University will become the first major research university in the nation to offer a master's degree completely online.

Long a leader in distance learning through graduate study courses videotaped or beamed off campus by satellite to on-the-job Silicon Valley engineers, Stanford has now crafted a master's degree program that won't require students to come on campus at all, other than to pick up their degrees.

"In the industrial age, we went to school. In the communication age, the school comes to us,'' said Andy DiPaolo, director of Stanford's Center for Professional Development.

The new online program will offer 30 courses leading to a master's degree in electrical engineering. Until now, Stanford had not been able to pull together enough virtual classroom offerings to allow a student to obtain the advanced degree. However, a $450,000 grant from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation will support start-up costs for the first two years to ensure a full complement of courses, officials said.

"We are going to give people in industry the same courses as if they were here on campus,'' said John Hennessy, dean of the School of Engineering. "They will experience the same intellectual rigor, the same up-to- date treatment of material,'' he added. "This is what makes Stanford's continuing education programs so successful.''

Online courses have been available for several years at many of the nation's traditional institutions of higher learning. There are 30 virtual degree programs on the West Coast alone, including a doctoral program in Transformative Learning and Change at the California Institute of Integral Studies and a master's program in nursing at Sonoma State University.

But, said Joseph Goodman, assistant dean of Stanford's School of Engineering, "to the best of our knowledge, we will be the first major research university in the U.S. to offer a master's degree totally online.'' About 50 students are expected to be accepted into the program by the time the virtual program gets under way in late September.

However, because most students will be working professionals, they are expected to take three to four years to complete their degree work. Typically, a master's degree candidate needs only a year or so. Many of the students who have already been accepted are veterans of desktop education through virtual classroom offerings of Stanford and other schools.

The university has linked up with Microsoft and Compaq to provide the master's degree candidates with state-of-the-art communications technology, officials said. Among other things, there will be electronic distribution of class handouts and notes and postings of homework and exams as well as interactivity among students and instructors.

Stanford's planning for the new degree-granting program has taken into account that cyberspace scholars often miss out on a number of intellectual experiences by their absence from campus. To compensate, the Center for Telecommunications will provide a number of interactive seminars and regular chat line discussions of relevant topics.

When judged by test scores, Stanford said, studies have shown there is little or no difference between the performance of distance learners and on-campus students.

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