Master of Arts in Instructional Technology Virtual Information Session

Hello everyone. Thank you so much for joining us. We're going to give everybody just a moment to make sure that their sound is working and that they all can hear us. Uh, for those of you who are joining live, for those of you who are watching our recording, uh, just give us just a couple of seconds as we get our live audience situated. But thank you for watching our recording.

Great it looks like everyone is in so welcome. My name is Jen Radwanski and I'm the associate director for graduate admissions here at Stockton. Today you're joining us to learn more about our Masters of Arts in instructional technology and what that entails here at our institution. And so I want to give you a couple of just tidbits number one for those of us who are for those of you who are joining us live, you'll notice there is a chat feature on the right hand side. Please feel free to utilize the chat however we.

Would encourage you to wait and hold all of your questions towards the end as we more than likely will cover a lot of the questions that you have throughout the presentation. However, if there's something that we may have missed, jot that down and we'll be happy to take questions at the very end of the presentation. If you are watching this pre recorded, we would encourage you to also do the same as watch till the end and feel free to e-mail us or call us and we'll give you our contact information at the end of the presentation as well.

So without further ado, I'm going to turn things over to our wonderful program chair for our meat program.

Doctor Amy Ackerman, as she's going to tell you more about about her program. So Doctor Ackerman, take it away.

Well, thank you, Jen. I appreciate that. So welcome everybody. And this is my favorite photo of Stockton, the Campus Center. Gorgeous. What a way to start. So I'm going to tell you a little bit about the mate degree, Masters of Arts, Instructional Technology, and then you're going to have an opportunity to ask all sorts of questions.

So what I'm going to do first is mention to you that it's a totally online program.

Now that's asynchronous and synchronous, and it means that you work on your own. And also some programs have synchronous sessions such as what you've probably done in Zoom, but again, it's online when you work together, so you won't be coming to the campus. And what is Masters of Arts instructional technology? What is instructional technology?

Well, I like to think of it as a type of problem solving.

And what you do is identify gaps or different types of performance challenges and then figure out what you can do to improve them. Where there are deficient areas and the intervention, the activity is usually some type of technology. And we're really excited because now.

With AI so high, we've incorporated that into our program as well.

And it's theory based, which means that it's a problem solving model and it's based on learning theories rather than some programs have what's often called a tool based approach where you learn a cool tool and you figure out, well, what can I do with that? Instead, what we do is.

Design a program based on objectives.

And what are the outcomes that the performers, the learners are supposed to exhibit through assessment And then develop the tool, pick the tool, develop the program. So it's a little bit different than some of what you see. And what I'm going to do is to show you.

The curriculum overview, the content delivery, which as we were saying before, it's online and it's synchronous as well as asynchronous. And probably one of the most interesting areas we'll discuss is careers. People want to know, OK, So what can I do with this master's degree?

And you're going to be very impressed because it's a hot area.

And it's in great demand now too. We'll also take a look at what's the cost. As you can imagine, by taking a totally online program, it's a great reduction. You save a great deal of money by taking online programs in contrast to coming to campus. And then of course, how to contact me.

So let's talk a little bit about the curriculum. It's a graduate program and there are 11 courses, 33 credits and five core courses, which means they are required and then you get a choice of six electives that you can choose from. Now what many of our students like to do is pick electives that will enable them to get a supervisor certificate if.

They're in AK12P12 environment in schools or that training and development certificate, which looks very good on a resume. Oftentimes corporate entities, the government, military, other institutions like to see that on a resume. So those are the approaches we use in the curriculum.

We were talking before about the content delivery. Again, it's totally online, so you won't have to come to campus. Although it as you saw the beautiful picture of the campus center at night, it's gorgeous. And to tease you a little bit more, I love snow. So in our Stockton campus, when a few flakes are falling from the sky, it's absolutely gorgeous and right now.

Or fall foliage. You might want to take a drive and come by too if you're in the area. So asynchronous and synchronous so you do it on your own time. Or sometimes the professors will have asynchronous session, which means that you get into a platform such as Zoom altogether. But you won't have surprises. They will announce this ahead of time, so don't worry about that.

Probably one of the most interesting areas is OK, so once I earn my degree, what can I do? So let's take a little look at this. On the left you have the some of the opportunities and on the right is what's called a career dashboard and you can also find this.

In the website in the graduate programs at Stockton for instructional technology.

On the landing page on the far right and what's enticing about this is that there are many jobs today that are available with a mate degree, Masters of arts, instructional technology and just take a peek at the salary range. It's very enticing. So let let me tell you first a little bit about.

My journey, how I got to where I am and the different stops I made along the way.

I started out as a 6th grade teacher in a middle school and I absolutely loved it. Love, love, love that. But at the same time, what I decided to do was to get my masters degree in educational technology and then that gave me some credentials too.

When I was a 6th grade teacher then I was offered the job of a media director within the same school system.

So I was still in education K12 and what I did was I proposed to a local Community College that we have a technology course at our school and we have had 25 people sign up and they got credit at a university. So what I was doing was acquiring a portfolio of experiences that I could use later.

So then I got offered.

College position in Georgia and I decided that I wanted to go on for my PhD across state lines at Florida State, so having those credentials really paid off later.

And at one of the conferences I was speaking at, a person from Bell Labs Corporation was in the audience and invited me to go to New Jersey, back to New Jersey and to interview for a job there. I have to confess that.

I was really not interested at first in the cutthroat corporate world, having heard all that, but I wanted to take advantage and of course, interview for it. And it was a trip back to New Jersey to visit my relatives. So I did, and they really, really did a number on me and the facilities, the support.

And the different types of studies that they were doing and patents and the use of instructional technology.

I was really taken. I was sold and get this, they doubled my salary, doubled it right on the spot and they did a move. In other words, they paid for my move all the way from Florida to New Jersey and gave me money to pay the taxes. So I was absolutely thrilled and then divested your rolled around with the Bell System and they offered me a position in California.

So I worked out there and then I taught part time as an adjunct.

With UC Berkeley. So you see how all of these experiences evolve, evolved into a thread and really broaden my background. And then I decided that I would leave and start my own business. And that's you'll see that when we talk about the gig economy. And for example, I had a contract with the US Navy and they sent me to Japan.

And I worked on a submarine base.

I also worked in Australia and on free time I went to the famous zoo in Australia, again with instructional design skills for developing and facilitating courses. So that that's part of my full round and then my ideal position, full circle is right where I am now.

Stockton University, right near my hometown.

And an opportunity to dabble in all of these skills. So that's the career path I took. Do you have to take a lengthy 1 like that? No, we get a lot of requests as far as how do you make the transition?

Well, the mate degree really is good for that because it's well recognized and if you look in job opportunities you'll see that many times they want.

A master's degree they want skill with adult learning. They want different types of.

Needs assessment, the whole steps that are involved in the instructional technology program, the word assessment comes to mind because we do a lot of assessment in a situation where there might be a challenge and we do a needs assessment at the beginning. We do formative assessments along the way.

And follow up summative.

So let's talk about some of the other career opportunities here.

For classroom teachers, it's a wonderful way to expand classroom skill sets, and especially in the area of assessment that is so well focused today.

Even the classrooms in K12 are using artificial intelligence, and that's something that we're incorporating now as well. Many of the teachers are involved in professional development sessions.

So they're often asked to conduct these and some of them get released time, others actually get a, a stipend to perform these. It might be a tool set, It might be, for example, the use of Canva or something like that, or a video tool that they're interested in learning. And online instructors are really hot today.

Part time and teachers as well as.

Other employees and organizations such as corporations and the military, government, faith-based. It's amazing. Higher Ed. We have a lot of people from different higher Ed institutions, including our own, that complete them 8°.

The area of educational consulting is also very popular, in great demand.

And organizations are hiring training and development specialists to go into.

Their organization because they've done different types of assessments and the return on investment for actually hiring these types of employees is more cost effective than contracting out. So there are, it's, it's a mix as far as that goes. Corporate trainers project manager is a really hot area that's popped up and that's part of our program as well.

As an elective, and it's also part of the training and development certificate program.

I will say that currently we're working with the MBA program on a specialized certificate that will incorporate some of the NBA courses and the MATE courses and they will be combined into an area of micro credentials which is badging certificates.

Very hot feel today and some people are taking that as an interim step.

Rather than the full degree. And because the courses count toward a degree, if they get a certificate first, then they can roll it into a full degree. So that's yet another option. Human resource managers, people think of that as far as staff hiring, but it's also development for the training programs that exist. So that's another umbrella and we have demand for that.

Human performance improvement. HPI.

Is really an umbrella under which all this fits. And what that means is if there is something that's taking place in an organization and it's not up to snuff as far as the performance, then the Human Performance Improvement Consultant can assist with that. Now, let me give you an example.

Let's say that Trip reports in an organization.

Or even book reports in AK12 setting.

Are constantly being returned because they're incomplete. So no matter what they've been doing, they can't get the people to complete the reports. So what would happen would be a needs assessment. OK. Are there certain parts of the report that cause grief to people and they skip it, They don't understand it.

Maybe it's the interface. So by doing what's called a frequency analysis, we find out, OK, so where where are the gaps? What's the problem there? And then figuring out what are the alternative solutions. Remember I was talking about problem solving. So what are some of the different techniques, we call them interventions that might be used to help people improve on this area of report completion and.

Might be a tutorial, an embedded tutorial, might be interactive video, it might be an e-learning module that steps through. So those are types of different types of programs and tools and interventions that we develop. And I was saying before that the input of.

AI Artificial intelligence is very helpful.

Developing and actually people use it for proofreading papers. So so we're using that generative AIA. Lot of the different programs are free to you've probably heard of ChatGPT, one of the most famous AI generative programs, and that can be done with a prompt that's entered in for what you're looking for.

And then out pops real quickly suggestions on how to approach it. And then the last one under career opportunities.

Is freelance and that's the gig. The common term now is the gig economy and that's where people in the old days we called you hang out your shingle and you have your own business. So freelance, right And people like this especially because the online learning as an example, modules that are developed can be at your own location your own time could be.

Summer could be in the weekends anytime you wish, but there is a great demand for self-employed subcontracted individuals with instructional technology experience. It's very popular today. So those are just some of the career opportunities as well as the enticing salaries.

So what does this cost? Currently at Stockton for Fall 2024 to summer of 2025, the cost for the online Totally online program is $736 per credit and as I say, most courses are three credits.

So that's a considerable savings from coming face to face.

And what we can do is if organizations are interested in a group of people getting the program on site or through a hybrid approach, half on site, half online, we can look into giving discounts for that as well.

So that's the end of what I'm sharing with you. And as you can tell, I started out as a 6th grade teacher and here I am with Stockton and loving every minute of it. So I hope you're going to join us and I'm going to let Jen jump in and give you a little more help in what to do next.

Awesome. Thank you so, so much, Doctor Ackerman. So let's talk a little bit further about how you can actually apply. And this is just a quick screenshot from our website. So you can go to our MATE website, which I will share with you in just a moment as well. So you'll see there's a number of items that you must here. I'm going to put this in so you all have it too that you must supply to us in order to apply. So the MATE program does accept applications both for the fall term and for the spring term, so applications.

Spring of 2025 are currently available as well as our fall 2025. The minimum undergraduate cumulative GPA is a 3.0 and you must possess a baccalaureate degree from a regionally accredited institution in higher education. We'll talk about this in a little bit because we're going to need to receive some information about your background and your educational history, but you will see here. You can click right on that when you're on our website and you can start your application.

There is a $50 application fee if you have any.

Difficulty with that, please reach out to us and we'd be able to be happy to chat with you about it. For Stockton students, there's also the direct entry option and this is for students who meet a certain GPA requirement and have graduated from Stockton within the last year. So this can be a really great resource for students again who have attended Stockton. You must have AGPA of a 3.25 and it's for any any major. So it's not specific to any particular major from the undergraduate level and this is.

Opportunity, the direct entry is not direct entry right into the program, but it is a shorter application. It allows you to waive a lot of these requirements, including letters of recommendation. We will load your transcript for you and you do not have to complete a number of the other requirements, but you will have to just simply do an essay and and again, we will upload your transcripts for you. So it's just a much shorter application and you're eligible for that within your first year after graduation.

So check that out and there's more information on our website.

The next part is the essay. So this is something that all applicants would need to complete and, uh, it is a short essay prompt that we have for all of our programs and that essay will, uh, populate once you start your application and you either pay the $50 application fee or a waiver code that you may be supplied. You will not be able to see that until one of the two are done. That's a frequently asked question that you, that we get. You will also need to submit letters of recommendation. Those are to be done electronically as well. We have a really great system.

That allows you to do all of that electronically. We encourage you to reach out to your recommenders ahead of time, let them know that that you've asked them to be a recommender and that they agree to it. And then from there you just need their name, their e-mail address and their title of where where you know them from. So it's a very simple process. Then our electronic system sends them the recommendation to complete and it attaches to your application automatically. So no going to retrieve anything from them. We will send them reminders for you. And so it's a very simple process that we do.

Ask that you reach out to them ahead of time. Recommenders should be individuals who can speak to your academic success as well. So even though you may have an next door neighbor that you've known for 30 years and could speak very highly of you, it really should be someone who has either worked with you in a professional setting again or someone that has worked or seen you in an academic setting. So a former professor or advisor or someone like that. If it's someone within your work profession, it's preferred that it's someone who can speak to you. Know how you'd be utilizing.

This degree in the future in a work setting as well. Umm, the next component is then sending us your official transcripts. And so if you are a Stockton student, we would be happy to, to load those for you. Uh, however, if you did not attend Stockton or if you had any transfer credits to Stockton, we will have to have those sent to us. Umm, so any institution you attended, whether it's for you did dual degree, you have an associate's degree as well as a bachelor's degree. Maybe you have another master's.

As well, all of those transcripts from any college level course that you've taken must be sent to us. You can have them mailed, but we really recommend that you have them emailed to us. It happens very quickly. The electronic system is quite fast. Yesterday I had a student reach out to me in the morning, said she sent three different or scheduled to have three transcripts sent to us and we actually had them loaded to our application by the end of the day. It was quite, quite impressive.

So that's not, it's not always that quick, but usually it's within the week and that makes the application process for you all much easier.

So please have those transcripts sent to Stockton and specifically, if you can have them sent to grad school at stockton.edu, that expedites the process even further. So those are the requirements that we have there. I'll also share with you that e-mail address to have the transcript sent on the screen right there below. Grad school. stockton.edu is the best way to contact us in addition to giving our office a call. We'd be happy to assist you with any questions you have if you're having any difficulties or if you want to just talk further about the program. I know.

Ackerman is always willing to talk as well. I think you actually had your contact information. Yes, I'm going to pull that back up for everyone to see. So you can either output ours in the chat too, but grad school at stockton.edu as well as amy.ackerman@stockton.edu. So let's drop this in the chat. So at this time, let's take any questions that you all have and, and we're happy to to answer those for you as I drop this in.

Alright, so that is our e-mail address.

So please feel free to reach out to us. You can also call us at the following phone number. I'm going to drop this in the chat for everyone as well. So again, if you were watching this prerecorded, you now have our contact information to reach out with. Any additional questions you have to if you're unable to put those in the chat directly.

All right. So that's there. The last thing I would also share with you all in addition to e-mail and our phone number is that we do have a feature on our website.

Umm, if you're on the mate website that I posted earlier, if you click the contact us button on the left hand side, you can schedule a virtual appointment with one of our teammates and graduate admissions. And we would be happy to to answer any questions on a virtual setting as well. So please feel free to schedule an appointment with us too.

Alright, I am not seeing any questions in the chat. Doctor Ackerman, is there anything else that you would like to conclude with or to share with our audience as we wrap up?

I'm thinking about that. I'm wondering.

If I'm looking at the location of someone.

I'm very impressed that it's pretty far away. Can you see that, Jen?

And that brings to mind that because we are online, we are globally.

Yes.

Hit hit accessible so I'm giving.

Yes, yes.

Yes, yes, This program is accessible to the entire world, which is pretty exciting, you know, with it being completely everything from orientation.

To all of the coursework is fully online the the only thing would be is attending graduation is the only thing that is not virtual but that's not a requirement to complete the degree so that's the great thing too but know that you would be invited still so.

Yes, a really really accessible program and great resources and I.

Just having talked to some of your students in the last week, they just, they rave about your program as well. And I would share that with all of our audience to say that they've, we have students again, I spoke with one of your current students yesterday and she's just learned so much from the program and has found it to be very helpful. Another one of your students who I believe is actually completing his degree this term has also talked about how much he has loved being a part of it and has been able to utilize it in his job.

And so it's, it's great to hear your students succeeding and sharing their stories. And so maybe we'll get them into our next webinar and and share that too.

So as we wrap up, since there's no additional questions, the last thing I'd like to share you with umm, oh, join a great question. Should international applicants contact you with the same number e-mail address below? So if you prefer not to call, because I know sometimes that can be difficult with international calls e-mail. Yes, absolutely. I would also share with you that we do have a specific tab if you are on that, that link that I posted to all of you in the beginning of the chat. If you click on that and at the very top left.

Side, there is a button that says for international applicants, because there are a few things that we might have to go over with you. There's some more information there. And at the very bottom, if you're making a or an appointment with us, you can do that from our contact us page or the international applicant page. And we do have a specific DSO, so someone who works, who counsels just with our applicants who are international. His name is Matt Shaw. He's fantastic. He'd love to meet with you and be able to talk through everything that you would need for this.

Process but anyone of our team would be able to help you too. So if you called or emailed any, anyone of our teammates could assist. So great question, thank you.

Excellent. But what I will share with you all is the strength of Stockton. I was at an event last week and someone asked me if you had to tell students in one short little blurb why they should attend Stockton, what would it be? And without hesitation, I said, our faculty, umm, our faculty are, are so engaged with our students, even in online programs.

And they just, they really care about our students and they care about you when you are in the program, making sure you succeed. And then even as alumni of the program. And Doctor Ackerman is definitely one of those individuals. We've worked together for a very long time. And the the way that our faculty care about our students is is above and beyond. And so know that you would get a lot of personalized attention, ability to ask questions and to really learn under their under their leadership. So.

Always like to be able to share that with folks as well. So all right, seeing that there's no additional questions, I hope everyone has a wonderful day. Those who are watching the recording, thank you. Those that joined us live, thank you. And Doctor Ackerman especially thanks for taking the time to join us and share, share your life story as well as about your program. It was really wonderful. Thank you so much. All right.

Loved it, loved it.

I hope everyone has a great day and please reach out if you have any additional questions. Take care everybody, Bye bye.