Advantages of the CSUN Approach to Designing and Supporting Online Degree Programs

California State University, Northridge was among the first major public universities in the nation to offer students master’s degree programs fully online. CSUN continues to lead the way by creating and delivering innovative and carefully designed online degrees for midcareer professionals. As recently as 2013, CSUN’s first online degree program, created over a decade ago, won the Outstanding Program Award bestowed by the University Professional and Continuing Education Association (UPCEA).

With its fully online master’s degree programs, the university’s record of student success continues, with on-time graduation rates of exceptionally high levels – well above national average, with most at or above an 80% on-time graduation rate, and some reaching over 90%.

The same faculty as on campus, the same standards of excellence

CSUN’s online programs are crafted by the same community of distinguished faculty members and practitioners who develop and teach the programs on campus. From the outset of its development of online degree programs, CSUN has been committed to the same academic standards and practices used for its traditional graduate programs. For its programs for midcareer professionals, purposeful innovation has been added to that traditional excellence. Faculty create and teach each course, working with skilled educational technology specialists who help them find and use the changing array of online tools and strategies that work for the course and the individual faculty member’s instructional style. CSUN’s online courses are not built using some standard template. Each online course is a distinctive educational experience with a particular faculty member working with a given cohort of midcareer students in a dynamic teaching and learning context. Curriculum content is not only integrated from course to course, but also updated every semester for relevance and applicability to current professional practice.