For information systems and decision sciences professor Daniel Soper, the journey to teaching in the nationally acclaimed fully online M.S. in Information Technology program at Cal State Fullerton’s College of Business and Economics began as a first-generation college student at the “other CSU” — the Colorado State University system. After earning his bachelor’s and master’s degrees there, he went to Arizona State University to earn his Ph.D. before coming to Cal State Fullerton in fall 2008.
“I taught in what was at the time a new M.S. in Information Technology program that was very unique for being fully online,” said Soper. “Years later, the fully online structure of this program would enable the M.S. in IT to become Cal State Fullerton’s best-performing academic program during the COVID-19 pandemic. By then, our professors were years ahead in teaching in a fully online format. Our online format provided us with a lot of advantages because there weren’t many players in the market at the time. For those students who wanted to continue their education at the graduate level but had real-world responsibilities — it was a great match for them.”
Inside the World of Teaching a World-Class Online Master’s Program
In the M.S. in Information Technology program, Soper primarily teaches the capstone seminar course, which students take in their last semester. This very nontraditional course involves no lectures or exams, but instead, it gives students the opportunity to demonstrate, through both individual and group work, that they have accumulated enough skills and merit to earn a master’s degree in information technology.
Read more in this CSUF Business News article.