"Due to the nature of my job, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to complete a traditional Master's degree," says Fitzgerald. "But I wanted the degree because it would make me more competitive for promotions and would be useful after I retire from the military."

Fitzgerald's search, which began two years ago, was fortuitously timed, as UC Irvine's new online Master of Advanced Studies (MAS) degree program in Criminology, Law & Society had just begun accepting applications.

Fitzgerald was immediately drawn to the UCI program, he says, because it would allow him to complete his coursework from Abilene, Kyrgyzstan, or anywhere else in the world, and to earn a degree from an institution that he respected.

In fall 2003 the two-year, $11,000-a-year online MAS program -- the first online degree-granting program in the UC system* -- was officially launched.

Fitzgerald became one of the first 22 students to enroll. His peers are police and probation officers, court employees and others in the criminal justice, law enforcement, and military communities. Most of them work full time and have families. The majority live in California while some live as far away as Virginia. Fitzgerald has completed his course work "whenever and wherever I can" while on active duty in Kyrgyzstan, a couple of hundred miles from the Chinese border.

In their application essays, students cited as the main reasons for applying UC's reputation for academic excellence and the asynchronous nature of the online program. Too busy to commit to a place and time, these students nonetheless wanted a quality education and were prepared to do the work required of a UC graduate program. These are exactly the types of students the MAS program was originally designed to attract.

A Program Five Years in the Making

In 1998, UC President Richard Atkinson announced an initiative to expand UC's offering of advanced degrees geared to working professionals. A new degree title -- the MAS -- was created and campuses competed for planning grants to develop pilot programs.

Heeding the call, UC Irvine's School of Social Ecology applied for and received a grant to develop a proposal to offer a degree in Criminology, Law & Society (CLS), for which it already had undergraduate and PhD programs on campus. Upon studying the feasibility of such a degree, planners in the CLS department came to the conclusion that the program would be best offered online because the potential students worked various shifts and schedules and were scattered throughout the state and country.

"I thought, 'We don't have a Master's degree in criminology and it's a profession with lots of working people in it. What better way to reach out to these people than to create a quality degree program that really does reach out'," says Henry Pontell, a professor in the CLS department, and principal visionary of the online program.

Acknowledging that it lacked the expertise to build, deliver, and market the online program all by itself, the CLS department forged a partnership with UCI Extension, whose staff had years of expertise in offering courses -- including online courses -- to working adults.

Pontell, the chair of the CLS department at the time, and Gary Matkin, Dean of Continuing Education, shepherded the program through the rigorous and lengthy review process of the campus Academic Senate. Being the first online degree-granting program on campus (not to mention in the UC system) made seeking approval a non-trivial task, to say the least.

"Little did I know how difficult it would be to get it done," says Pontell. "We were kind of pioneers because there were no institutional mechanisms for online programs. However, after we crossed all the t's and dotted the i's, and once everyone got over their biases toward distance learning, the Senate supported it at least in part because they thought it was a worthy experiment."

And the experiment seems to be a successful one thus far. Students, faculty, and staff involved in the program are overwhelmingly positive in their assessment of the first year.

"Quality" and "Online" Not Mutually Exclusive

Some of the faculty and students involved in the CLS program admit that they were at first leery of online education. They thought the quality might not be as good as that offered in the traditional residential format and that there would be a dearth of personal interaction - shortcomings commonly perceived to be associated with online education. However, they now feel that this skepticism was misplaced.

"I was skeptical of online education before but now I realize that this isn't some fly-by-night type of program," says student Jim Olson, a police sergeant in Orange County. "You actually have to do a lot of quality work. I feel the education has been extremely beneficial and rewarding."

A major reason for the program's success is that the courses are developed and taught by UCI faculty. The faculty are all ladder-rank and many are national leaders in their fields.

"There are no other online programs that I know of in which nationally and internationally known faculty have developed in their own words what students will experience and then teach it themselves," says Larry Cooperman, Director of Instructional Design and Technology at UCI Extension. "We have some great people in the CLS department who are completely hands on, which is fairly unique in the annals of online education. You've just never seen the depth of the content - it's simply outstanding."

The students are also top quality. They must meet established UC academic requirements, although professional experience is also heavily considered. They are all working professionals with a sophisticated understanding of criminology, says Pontell, and thus contribute to an engaging learning atmosphere.

"They are typically a bit older, they have real world experience, and are very good students," says Pontell.

Partnering with Extension for Technology Expertise

A significant factor in making the program run smoothly is the instructional design and technology expertise provided by UCI Extension. The campus Extension programs offer the vast majority of online courses that are available in the UC system. By tapping into its expertise in developing, delivering, and supporting online courses, the CLS department avoided making many mistakes common to new distance education ventures.

To develop the courses -- there are 12 total in the two-year program -- the technology experts in Extension's Distance Learning Center (DLC) worked closely with the CLS faculty to translate their curricular content and teaching styles to the web format.

"Faculty were taught to think in terms of screen concepts -- or storyboarding -- because the courses would be running online and asynchronously," explains Jia Frydenberg, Director of the DLC. "The process is very interactive and iterative. When the faculty and instructional designer were done producing content, the graphic designer gave it a look and feel. Then the faculty were called in again for the last stage of quality assurance to make sure the courses were exactly the way they wanted them."

Faculty were offered compensation for developing courses. They had a choice between $10,000 or release from two courses. Faculty say it took at least one quarter to develop the courses, and in many cases a lot longer. The process was not always smooth or easy, but well worth it, because the faculty felt they created something that would have longevity and could be used in various other courses, says Pontell. The faculty had agreed up front that they would share the online materials that they created.

"The development process was a lot of work -- much more than I anticipated," says Val Jenness, current Chair of the CLS department. "It was an overwhelming task to take everything I do in class and somehow codify it and make it visual. To put all of that on a page and not make it not look like a boring page of text took hundreds and hundreds of hours. Was it fun? No. Did it go as smoothly as can be expected? Yes. Am I proud of it? Yes. I would show it off to anyone."

The DLC also trained faculty in how to teach online, which is very different from face-to-face instruction. Because the "lectures" are already online and consumed by students at their own pace, faculty time is mostly spent grading assignments and responding to students' questions and comments sent via email or posted on web-based bulletin boards.

Online -- But with a Catch

Although the program is billed as an online enterprise, the inaugural course is actually held on campus. It's a five-day intensive orientation in which students and faculty meet each other as well as get acquainted with how the two years of the program will operate.

This on-campus component of the program was highly rated by faculty and students. They say that having the opportunity for faculty to meet their students and for students to meet their peers strengthened the bonds between them and contributed to a robust community that grew in the online environment throughout the academic year -- an accomplishment that online programs often struggle to attain.

By nature, online education can be alienating, with students seated by themselves at their computers, at different times of the day and night, with possibly hundreds or thousands of miles between them.

"In early proposals the entire program was conceived to be taught online but as it went through review it was suggested strongly that there be a face-to-face component," says Jenness. "I think it was a good move because it allowed us to meet the students and, more importantly, it created a kind of cohort effect, which allowed students to get to know each other. As a result, the students in the online program are even closer than those in our in-person programs."

Students say it was helpful to develop a rapport and gain an understanding of each other in the physical environment before moving to an electronic one.

"A lot of times when people write email you don't get their tone but when you meet them you can understand how they express themselves," says student Pamela Newcomb, a probation officer in the Irvine area. "We've really come to know each other a lot since we've met each other and by posting our ideas and responding to each other's ideas." In fact, they've come to know -- and like -- each other so much that a group of students planned a trip to Las Vegas this summer just to spend time with one another.

The CLS faculty and instructional designers carefully crafted the courses to heighten online interaction with students and to keep them in regular communication with each other. A significant part of teaching online courses is facilitating this online communication. Many of the CLS faculty say they spent six or more hours each week responding to comments and questions that students posted.

"Interaction is what makes a class rich in any setting," says technology expert Larry Cooperman. "In this program it was facilitated by how the first week was planned as well as the faculty feeling responsibility for the success of each student."

Students say that overall they are happy with the level of interaction with their professors. In fact some people think more interaction goes on in the online classes than in the face-to-face classes.

"There's probably more classroom interaction than you would have in a regular class," says professor Henry Pontell. "You have the benefit of interaction with every single student. They can't hide. They have to respond to every assignment. I was thrilled because I got to know every student through interaction, which is quite extensive in some cases."

"The professors monitor what's on the class web site regularly and some are in there posting with us almost every day," says Newcomb. "I feel they have been really responsive, and are very enthusiastic and helpful. I feel like I got a lot of encouragement and direction and validation, which helps to inspire me to do my coursework."

Student Support Crucial to Success

Online education has a reputation for high attrition rates. Here, too, the CLS program has fared well, with only two students dropping out (in addition to one who, tragically, died in a car accident and another who deferred enrollment until fall 2004). In the typical Extension online course, says Cooperman, there is an attrition rate of 30 - 50%. Part of the success of the CLS program can be attributed to giving students regular deadlines.

"You can't really fall behind with the format that they implemented because we have something due every week," says student Pamela Newcomb. "You're pretty much compelled to stay on track."

Providing timely technology support is also a crucial factor. When problems do arise, Frydenberg and her assistant offer support via telephone during regular business hours. If the problem is complicated, the campus Network Administration group is contacted, where there is 24-hour service. Frydenberg even distributed her cell phone number to students for questions during off hours, although no one ever called.

"We always get back to students within the working day, even if it's just to refer them to someone else," says Frydenberg. "It's been shown over and over again that the way people think of good service is rapidity of response and how honest that response is."

Another factor in keeping students on track is making the technology simple. Developers built the courses to be easy to use and access. They are mostly text-based, with very little use of advanced technologies that require plug-ins or special software.

"One of the plusses is that the system on the web is extremely easy to use," says student Jim Olson. "There were no major technical problems and, when there were problems, we were immediately notified and the situation was rectified immediately. The IT people are very good."

Onward and Upward

The online Criminology, Law & Society program is now welcoming its second cohort of 23 students, who arrived on campus in September for the five-day orientation.

Over the next several years, the program aims to enroll a greater number of students each year - up to 40 in each cohort -- in order to fulfill its mandate that it be a self-supporting enterprise. A continuing challenge will be marketing -- it can be difficult and costly to reach the students who are potentially interested in earning a graduate degree in criminology.

Another struggle will be to keep the students -- and faculty -- engaged in distance learning for two years in a row. Frydenberg of the Distance Learning Center says that the style of the courses is somewhat different in the second year - they are "more leadership-oriented" and thus may provide some renewed motivation to students. Also, she and Larry Cooperman are looking into incorporating synchronous interaction, such as live, real-time video of the professor and multi-way audio for real-time seminar discussions. They may also add guest speakers and special seminars to the online line-up.

"Keeping the motivation going for two intensive years is, I think, going to be a bit of a challenge," says Frydenberg. "However, I don't see any flagging enthusiasm in the first cohort."