Online students graduate

Pitt’s first online students can finally turn off their computers; they have… Pitt’s first online students can finally turn off their computers; they have graduated.

Two years ago, Pitt started its first online degree program, FastTrack, and two weeks ago, the program graduated its first class.

FastTrack allows students to receive a master’s degree in library and information science programming, recognized by the Committee on Accreditation of the American Library Association, by taking classes over the Internet.

Recent graduate Marycatherine McGarvey said students communicated with their professors and sent their coursework online through Blackboard, Pitt’s online course management program. Professors listed the required work on Blackboard, allowing students to do it at their own convenience before the designated deadlines.

According to a Pitt press release, Ronald Larsen, the dean of Pitt’s School of Information Sciences, said, “As the first online degree program at the University of Pittsburgh, this became an experiment in a number of ways, from transforming our informational delivery to building a community among students distributed across the country.”

Larsen said the program was created to extend SIS’s “outstanding” master’s program to a larger area outside of Oakland.

Pitt’s reputation in library education helped to entice students who live outside of Pittsburgh, like McGarvery, to register with the program.

“What attracted me to the program was the fact that it was the University of Pittsburgh,” McGarvey, who lives in Norristown, Pa. with her husband and three children, said.

“The recognition of the school was worth any aggravation,” she added.

For six weeks during her program, McGarvey had to deal with problems affecting her home Internet access after Excite went bankrupt, she said. But with her professors’ support and the use of her neighbors’ and office computers, she worked through it.

McGarvey worked with Windows and similar software at her library job and helped to open a computer lab at the Montgomery County, Norristown Library when she was halfway through the FastTrack program.

The 35 graduates came from Delaware, Florida, Maryland, Nevada, New York, Pennsylvania and Washington, D.C.

FastTrack not only allowed students to come from different places, but it opened doors for the many students who returned to education later in their lives, after being out in the working world for several years.

Students had an average of five years’ experience in library work, and the average age of the students enrolled was 39 years.

To receive their online master’s degrees, students had to finish at least 36 credits.

Some students, including McGarvey and Moira Tyrell, enrolled in Pitt’s program because it allowed them to stay at home with their children while still getting an education.

When she started, Tyrell was living in Pittsburgh. She called Pitt to see what programs it had to offer and learned about the new FastTrack program.

“The instructors were very professional and were very knowledgeable about the various subjects they taught,” she said. “I think this comes from the fact that most of them actually worked in the field and had first-hand knowledge.”

Another student, Bill Yurvati, liked the program because it allowed him to keep his job as a library technician at Kutztown University while he pursued an education to become a professional librarian in an academic library.

Though students did the majority of their coursework over the Internet, they were required to visit Pitt for eight days at the beginning of their first summer term, and then for one long weekend during each subsequent term. The visits allowed students to complete specific course requirements, participate in computer training and get to know other students and their professors. McGarvey said she and other students looked forward to their weekends in Pittsburgh, and some even made the required three-day visit into a four-day “mini-vacation.”

Starting the program and graduating with the same set of students helped create bonds among the students, even though they might have been miles apart, McGarvey said.

“I knew my [FastTrack] classmates better than I knew my classmates in undergraduate school,” she said.

She also learned more about her professors through the FastTrack program. In undergraduate schooling, most professors could recognize a student’s name, but not place the name with a face, McGarvey said. In the online program, students talked with their professors directly, either through e-mail or on the telephone, so they all knew each other very well, she added.