Past Event: Oden Institute Seminar

Georgia Tech’s Online MOOC-based Master Program and the future of online learning in higher education

Zvi Galil, Professor, Computer Science, Georgia Tech

Abstract

In May 2013, Georgia Tech together with its partners, Udacity and AT&T, announced a new online master’s degree in computer science delivered through the platform popularized by massively open online courses (MOOCs). This new online MS in CS or OMSCS for short cost less than $7,000 total, compared to a price tag of $40,000 for an MS CS at comparable public universities and upwards of $70,000 at private universities.

The first-of-its-kind program was launched in January 2014 and has sparked a worldwide conversation about higher education in the 21st century. President Barack Obama has praised OMSCS by name twice, and over 1,200 news stories mentioned the program. It’s been described as a potential “game changer” and “ground zero of the revolution in higher education”. Harvard University researchers concluded that OMSCS is “the first rigorous evidence showing an online degree program can increase educational attainment” and predicted that OMSCS will single-handedly raise the number of annual MS CS graduates in the United States by at least 7 percent.

OMSCS started in 2014 with small enrollment of 380; in spring 2022 semester enrollment is 12,016; OMSCS is apparently the biggest MS in CS program in the world. So far over 7,740 students have graduated from OMSCS; over 2,200 graduated in the last academic year. The program has also paved the way for more than 70 similar, MOOC-based affordable online MS programs. There is a shortage of one million computing professionals in the US. Therefore, OMSCS is satisfying a great national need. Starting in 2017, Georgia Tech expanded its online offerings to its undergraduate computer science students.

The talk will describe the OMSCS program, how it came about, its first eight years, and what Georgia Tech has learned from the OMSCS experience. It will also discuss the speaker’s vision of the future of higher education with much larger role for online learning.

For those who wish to sign up to meet with Dr. Galil, CS has set up a talk schedule.  Here is the link: https://apps.cs.utexas.edu/calendar/talk-schedules.

Biography

Zvi Galil was born in Tel Aviv, Israel. He earned BS and MS degrees in Applied Mathematics from Tel Aviv University, both summa cum laude. He then obtained a PhD in Computer Science from Cornell University. After a post-doctorate in IBM's Thomas J. Watson research center, he returned to Israel and joined the faculty of Tel-Aviv University. He served as the chair of the Computer Science department in 1979-1982.

In 1982 he joined the faculty of Columbia University. He served as the chair of the Computer Science Department in 1989-1994 and as dean of The Fu Foundation School of Engineering & Applied Science in 1995-2007. Galil was appointed Julian Clarence Levi Professor of Mathematical Methods and Computer Science in 1987, and Morris and Alma A. Schapiro Dean of Engineering in 1995.

In 2007 Galil returned to Tel Aviv University and served as president. In 2009 he resigned as president and returned to the faculty as a professor of Computer Science. Galil served as the third John P. Imlay Jr. Dean of Computing at Georgia Tech from July 2010 through June 2019.

Galil's research areas have been the design and analysis of algorithms, complexity, cryptography and experimental design. In 1983-1987 he served as chairman of ACM SIGACT, the Special Interest Group of Algorithms and Computation Theory. He has written over 200 scientific papers, edited 5 books, and has given more than 150 lectures in 20 countries. Galil has served as editor in chief of two journals and as the chief computer science adviser in the United States to the Oxford University Press. He is a fellow of the ACM and the American Academy of Arts and Sciences and a member of the National Academy of Engineering. In 2009 the Columbia Society of Graduates awarded him the Great Teacher Award. In 2020, Academic Influence included Galil in the list of the 10 most influential computer scientists of the last decade, and the advisory board of the College of Computing at Georgia Tech raised over $2 million from over 130 donors to establish an endowed chair named after Galil.

Zvi Galil is married to Dr. Bella S. Galil, a marine biologist. They have one son, Yair, a corporate lawyer in New York.