Synchronous Cohort-Based International Education

Many universities are striving to reach a broader audience of students by expanding into the international market, especially for graduate degree programs. The two dominant types of educational offerings to international students are (1) online degree programs or (2) establishment of an international branch campus. Both approaches present significant challenges, specifically, low persistence and completion rates in online courses and difficulty staffing international branch campuses with high-quality faculty members. To address these problems, we have developed a novel mode of distance education that offers a high-quality learning environment for students and quality instruction from instructors who remain on the home campus. We describe the implementation, operation, and assessment of the Live Platform used in our Field Degree Program to demonstrate the effectiveness of this new mode of synchronous cohort-based international education.