Virtual Open House MS Applied Information Technology Transcript

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George Mason Online Admissions: Good evening. My name is Susan. I’m an enrollment coordinator on behalf of George Mason, and I’m joined here with Dr. Reticova to talk about the online masters of applied information technology. So I want to make sure that you can hear me. So if you can use your chat feature just to tell me where you’re from, and then we’re just going to wait a few minutes

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George Mason Online Admissions: to let people trickle in, and I see they are trickling in. But just use the chat feature to let me know whether you can hear me. Okay, and where you’re from.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Can you hear me.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Well, I can, if it counts.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Nobody’s responding. Don’t be shy. I know you’re there.

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Ioulia Rytikova: We can wait a few moments, maybe.

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George Mason Online Admissions: We can. That’s fine.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Good evening, everybody. If you could use the chat feature to let me know where you’re joining us from.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Hmm!

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Ioulia Rytikova: Well, well, since we do have people in the room, maybe. Can you.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Get started.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Can you say something? Maybe

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George Mason Online Admissions: Yeah.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Just you could say some. We we just want to make sure that you can hear us. We can. We can give the entire presentation, but if nobody hears us, the purpose will be lost.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Exactly so. I can see that

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George Mason Online Admissions: there’s a couple people in the audience

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George Mason Online Admissions: if you can either. You can even type in the Q&A. Either in the Q&A. Or in the chat feature.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Just that you can hear us just put

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George Mason Online Admissions: a Y for yes, and an n for no.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Hmm.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Can.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Okay. Yay, thank you. Alice.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Okay. Great.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Yes.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Woof.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Hallelujah! Alice!

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George Mason Online Admissions: Alice, I have great news for you. I was talking to Dr. Reticova, but we’ll talk about that. It has to do with the prerequisites. So we’ll talk about that in a little bit, and I’m so glad that you let us know that you can hear us.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Oh, it’s wonderful! Yes, we’re we’re back in the game, Susan.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Actually.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Oh, my goodness, all right.

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George Mason Online Admissions: doctor, just let me know whenever you’d want me to go ahead and kick it off, or we can wait a couple of minutes.

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Ioulia Rytikova: I think we can start. We waited a little bit if more

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Ioulia Rytikova: join us. That would be fantastic, but we can probably start.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Okay. So good evening again. My name is Susan. I’m an enrollment coordinator on behalf of George Mason. I’m joined here tonight with the director of the online masters of Applied information technology, Dr. Ratikova. So we are going to talk about the program. Actually, she’s going to talk about the program. And with respect to the application process, I can

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George Mason Online Admissions: answer questions regarding that. So

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George Mason Online Admissions: what we’re going to do the agenda for this evening is Dr. Ratikova will introduce herself. And then we’ll talk about why, George Mason’s ait program. Okay? And then we’ll talk a little bit about the online format of the program

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George Mason Online Admissions: and any admissions, questions, and requirements, I can speak about those. And then Q&A, okay. So

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George Mason Online Admissions: in terms of how to participate, you’re not going to be able to raise your hand. But there is the chat feature.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Okay, and also the Q&A, all right. So

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George Mason Online Admissions: for any questions feel free to input them throughout the program and then

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George Mason Online Admissions: depending, we can either answer them throughout the session. Dr. We didn’t discuss how you wanted to do that, or at the end. However, you’d like to do that. Okay.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Any moment. Questions are always welcome. Well, we can move on to the next slide. Well, good evening, everyone. My name is Dr. Ritakova. It’s such a pleasure to be here today. Every time when I give this, when I meet with students or prospective students or just with students, doesn’t matter. I get super excited in, particularly the reason why is because

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Ioulia Rytikova: I’m really excited about this program. I’ve been working in academia. Probably I could say all my life. I came from a family with my parents and grandparents, who also worked in academia. So I really enjoy being in this academic environment. I see what a difference it makes for many people who come to us, and then we they come back and they stay stay in stay in

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Ioulia Rytikova: touch when they say, well, Professor, I actually did this and that, and then I found a new job, and I just had a great offer, or it’s all great. But my favorite one, professor. I just used what you taught me, and it actually worked. And this is probably the best compliment a professor may receive. So for me when I end up, and if I look back, I’ve been in this department for quite some time.

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Ioulia Rytikova: because I’m not only a professor. I’m also an associate chair and a director for this online program. But more importantly, I was all these years I was because I am. I am so passionate about education, that’s my interest.

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Ioulia Rytikova: I am overseeing well, I completely leading pretty much all initiatives, not only at the level of our department, but also college and school, level and universal level of innovative teaching and learning I receive. Well, I guess this is the point when when I brag. But I received multiple outstanding teaching awards, not because I’m so amazing. But I think

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Ioulia Rytikova: because I’m so enthusiastic about what I do that these words are. It was very, very to me. It’s important, because every time when you, when you try new things and you, you try to implement some ideas in your classes. You sometimes don’t know whether it works or not. And when you receive this feedback, not only from students, but from your colleagues.

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Ioulia Rytikova: then that means a lot.

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Ioulia Rytikova: So you know that you’re doing something useful for students. It’s working, and students appreciate that. The reason why I bring this up not just to brag, but because our department, as I will say later, is. Probably it’s not just about the program. It’s about the department. When you come to our program, you become part of our department, which means you will be working with the best

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Ioulia Rytikova: researchers in the field. And I can talk about this for hours because we have a very strong community because it is so interdisciplinary. We have a great community of researchers in cyber security. We have one of the most successful cybersecurity research centers, and the majority of our faculty are affiliated with them.

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Ioulia Rytikova: We also have a very strong community in AI and machine learning and the Hci human computer interaction. So so we are, we’re our research interests are very wide. We collaborate with many, many other researchers, not only in our not only in our school, but also outside of our school, internally in the university, and outside, which means that all everything we do, it comes back to

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Ioulia Rytikova: our classes and our students. I always. I’m both. I’m kind of jealous, because I think I wish I could take all our classes myself. But I’m also very, very proud, because when students come to our program I know that we will deliver the best result from every aspect of this educational process. It’s not only that we have outstanding researchers, we have outstanding teachers because many of our faculty, we received

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Ioulia Rytikova: outstanding teaching awards. And there are different levels of awards. So we have pretty much everything in online and in person, and even our adjunct faculty. We have some, and even they received some of the outstanding teaching awards. So anyway, what I’m trying to say that the program that we have to offer is one of the truly top programs

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Ioulia Rytikova: that on the markets today, we can maybe move to the next slide and look at some specifics about the program. So I know it’s a lot of words here. But the idea is truly that the program offers a high quality curriculum. And we have for the online program. We have the concentrations on the screen. But in addition to that, our own ground program

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Ioulia Rytikova: has, like, for instance, Hci, human computer interaction concentration that it’s a management concentration. We also just created a new which is not even listed. It’s not available yet, but we already got approved, and the applied. AI concentration will appear in the catalog in fall 2025, which means that we are a very dynamic

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Ioulia Rytikova: department, because again, I see changes. You wake up in the morning, and by the end of the day it’s already changed, and you need to be prepared for that. So that’s what we teach. We are very proud that our department and I can. Again. I try to be very focused, and I promise that I will just stick to the topics, although I can talk so much about it that it’s my personal opinion. But that’s based on what I hear, read and do research on

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Ioulia Rytikova: that our department is uniquely positioned in our days compared to the Cs department, for instance.

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Ioulia Rytikova: because with this recent development of AI, which affects everything, including education, and it’s quite a challenge for everyone, for students, for professors. It seems like it’s very helpful. But you need to know how to work with that. But what I’m trying to say is that now the focus we have the Cs department, that’s 1 of the most common questions. So what’s the difference between you and Cs, so the Cs Department is very fundamental. They go into theory, they discuss

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Ioulia Rytikova: theoretical models, they develop these theoretical models. When it comes to us. It’s all about applications. That’s why, again, in our days, when AI is right there, machine learning big data, data analytics, we have it all. What we do. We teach students how to apply that we are a very hands on program pretty much. Everywhere you go you will have some sort of projects and

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Ioulia Rytikova: or practice exercises or collaboration with other students. So compared to the Cs department, for instance, we do cover fundamentals, but our goal is to prepare students. This variety of options. All the applications that are available out there, because this is the way where current research goes.

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Ioulia Rytikova: and even our life, pretty much all the applications can be used in education, in health, in industry, you can put. You can choose anything in our everyday life. So that would be something that I would always share with our prospective students, because we often get questions. So if I don’t have a lot of experience in it.

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Ioulia Rytikova: if my background is not in it, or it’s not Cs. Or I don’t have maybe a very advanced math, or I did my bachelor degree, let’s say 5, 1020, 30 years ago, and everything is fine.

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Ioulia Rytikova: And we are that program. I’m always proud to say that we are that program compared to many other programs where they have lots of prerequisites, and even to enter the program. You have to have a solid background in advanced math advanced maybe, or computer science particularly so. And it’s great for for that path. It’s important. And and that’s what that’s what the purpose of that.

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Ioulia Rytikova: But for us, the way we designed from the very beginning, this program, and we don’t have time to talk about the history. But historically, we worked. We actually developed this program for government agencies because they wanted to provide training for their employees with very different backgrounds. So we had to kind of

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Ioulia Rytikova: come up with some creative ideas, creative approaches to help students from different backgrounds, different levels, and bring them all together to that common knowledge.

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Ioulia Rytikova: So that’s that’s the reason why, even if students don’t have solid experience or background in it, we do accept students. If a student has absolutely no experience in it which doesn’t happen often. But once in a while, you might say this, too. We accept students provisionally. It doesn’t mean anything, that it’s not nothing bad. It only means that you will need to take one more

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Ioulia Rytikova: prep course to help you as part of those 10 courses. So it’s not extra. But you will need to complete this course to be prepared for for the program we implemented this many years ago, maybe 5, 7 years ago, and since then most of our almost everyone. I usually sign all the forms of students who wants to leave this program. It rarely happens

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Ioulia Rytikova: pretty much. Everyone successfully gets through the program. They’re excited. They’re curious. They’re interested. So in general, this program has a great future. It’s designed very well what we do. We consistently add new courses, new concentrations, because it changes all the time.

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Ioulia Rytikova: and our goal is not just to teach. That’s also important from the beginning, from the perspective of future jobs.

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Ioulia Rytikova: What we do, we don’t just teach or use this tool or that or that application we teach. We try to teach students skills that in the next 5 years will be critical, those skills, such skills as, for instance, creativity, collaborative skills. Because we, I will talk more about classes later, but we do require students to collaborate together. They work in teams, they collaborate.

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Ioulia Rytikova: and they consult with professors and with gtas. So I will talk about more about this late in a moment. So but let me answer your question here.

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Ioulia Rytikova: for on campus alright, so.

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George Mason Online Admissions: It’s just me.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Great question. I love this question. If I could talk about the concentration all day long. It was a great success to be honest, and the concentration itself is very interesting. Currently, it will be in full 2025. It will be available for the on ground program, but our goal is to add it to the online program. Also, I just cannot give you the specific date

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Ioulia Rytikova: hopefully, fall works fine, maybe spring. But if you’re interested, I would suggest to contact me in fall, and then we can talk more about it.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Okay, perfect. Thank you so much.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Next slide.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Okay.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Well, this is my by far my favorite slide. I know it’s only just a few points here and there, and I wish you were in our classrooms to see how it works. Well, 1st of all, if you look at our courses, that throughout the entire program they are very professionally developed.

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Ioulia Rytikova: I always tell this story to me. It’s funny, but I don’t know how funny it is when Covid happened. Then everybody had to switch to online classes. And right after that, maybe in a year or so, people were saying, well, we’re actually, we’re fine. We’re doing great in online education. We have classes, and so everybody

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Ioulia Rytikova: felt like they were experts. Maybe they were. I don’t know. All I can say is that our department was the 1st department in the university that created the entire program online. And it happened about 12 or 13 years ago, which means way way before Covid. We were already experts as the director of Online Education says, that’s my favorite quote.

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Ioulia Rytikova: he said, for the for our college. He always says that the ist department not only developed this program first, st but they develop policies and procedures and best practices that the rest of the university followed. So we are true. I can proud again. Here, here, go. I’m bragging again that we are proud to be experts in online education.

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Ioulia Rytikova: all the courses in the program. They are designed with some professional assistance. So courses are media rich. We have collaborative learning environments, as I mentioned earlier, that students work in groups. And if you’re concerned that again, no time for this. But once you get to the program and you get to my my class is one of the first, st actually the 1st class that students take. So once it gets to me, I will talk so much about it.

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Ioulia Rytikova: But the way we use again a lot of innovative ideas in education, we don’t let students start taking the class. And then, 8 weeks later, each class is 8 weeks, and 8 weeks later we say, Well, who are you? Hello! So now it’s the time for the final exam. We work with students consistently every day, and I mean it every day.

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Ioulia Rytikova: We have assignments, we have some some collaborative assignments, we have projects we have. Well, we do have some exams, and maybe because it’s important. But what’s more important, again, even exams, it’s all hands on. So we don’t require. We do have again theoretical questions, but mostly hands on.

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Ioulia Rytikova: What I’m trying to say is that the way it works during the week? Well, 1st of all, we communicate with students through announcements and emails nearly almost every day. Just because the reason why I’m so careful with that, because last year one of the students said, Professor, you know it’s a lot. It’s too much. Don’t send so many emails. Okay, I will slow down.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Which. So we’re trying to find that balance to make sure that there is no cognitive overload. My research is in cognitive learning, and I incorporate lots of ideas there. And I have 2 research groups which again include all the ideas into our courses. But so, 1st of all, we communicate often with students.

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Ioulia Rytikova: although that’s important. I really want to say that very loudly, so that everyone can hear me, that although the program is 100% online, which is true, nevertheless.

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Ioulia Rytikova: we offer every week. We have what we call optional class meetings when once a week. Sometimes some professors do it twice a week. It depends because I do it once a week. It’s enough. Once a week I meet with students. I sit down like we sit here, but right now I’m not asking any questions, and you’re just listening. But in my class, everybody participates. We work together.

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Ioulia Rytikova: We ask questions. We go over the course and how just everything that’s once a week online. And what I usually do, I ask students to select the time that works best for them, because every time every semester I get new students, different students and I have a variety of options on the day and the time when we meet. So usually like, for instance, this semester, I’m meeting with students at 6 pm.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Last semester. It was 7 Pm. Because students wanted to. Well, and in addition to that again, I’m very proud to say that we have teaching assistants.

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Ioulia Rytikova: I understand. For students it might be not maybe that significant, but not every department, not every program have Gtas. That’s something that we are very happy to have. It’s supported by the Dean’s office, and I am very grateful for that. And our Gtas also have office hours once a week. Professors, in addition to optional class meetings. We also have office hours. So you can also schedule A

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Ioulia Rytikova: and an individual meeting with a professor. And we try to again to work with professor with students schedule. So it’s in the evening, if and I give flexibility to students whenever you need. We can meet

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Ioulia Rytikova: and and they work with gtas in addition to that. So I feel that our students are supported a lot the way class and courses are designed. They follow. Since we worked with professional designers, then we, our courses. They all have the same.

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Ioulia Rytikova: the same course, organization, the same structure, the same colors, views, design everything well, the the content changes. But every time when students move to the next course they don’t panic. They already know what this course, how the course looks, and how the course is organized and structured, what to expect. So there might be slightly different requirements. But students don’t don’t

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Ioulia Rytikova: to waste their time on moving around trying to find something. It’s very, very professionally done. So that’s that’s really important.

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Ioulia Rytikova: In addition, maybe we need to move to the next one.

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Ioulia Rytikova: As I mentioned earlier, I will quickly repeat that we have. Yep, here we go, so you can find some of the numbers for what to expect after you graduate and numbers change, and we’ll see how it goes in the next few years. What I also.

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Ioulia Rytikova: I would like to mention that. I know there is a lot of concern which I understand where it comes from, a lot of concern about future jobs in it in in any field it related field. And I, I agree with that. I have very good news for you. Well, it does affect according to research and statistics, because we we do this.

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Ioulia Rytikova: We check it literally every day, because we are very concerned about our students. And we have a lot of support for our undergraduate students currently, who are who have troubles finding jobs

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Ioulia Rytikova: so. But what happens at the moment is happening at the moment is that all the all the AI developments they affect most undergraduate graduates. So those students, they’re quite vulnerable. I will. I will agree with that. But the statistic shows that master’s students and master’s degrees and Phd. Degrees are more valuable now than even before.

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Ioulia Rytikova: So which to me again, we don’t have time to go into details, but to me it makes perfect sense, simple tasks can be provided by AI. But once it gets to the point where you need to think, you need to synthesize knowledge, you need to create new knowledge. So innovation comes into play. And that’s what we try to do in our graduate program. We’re very focused on that. Not just technologies. But we’re trying to work with students and

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Ioulia Rytikova: boost their imagination creativity as well as their technical background also. So again, I wouldn’t worry too much. And in my my estimations that since you’re starting right now, within the next 2 to 3 years, we will figure out what to do with students with an industry will figure out what they do with what they need to do, because now some of the European

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Ioulia Rytikova: companies I just read an article about that that about a year ago they fired pretty much everyone. And now they say, well, actually, we still need people. So they started hiring people back. So it will take maybe some time to for everybody to adjust. But with this education you will be quite prepared for pretty much anything that comes in the next few years.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Thank you next slide.

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Ioulia Rytikova: and I believe I’m almost done. This is also again to me. That’s like music to my eyes, music to my ears. But it’s for my eyes. It’s like, I’m looking at this and thinking, Why, it’s amazing we have. So that’s what we have to offer. And as an educator, with well, some experience I can say that this curriculum was developed, not

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Ioulia Rytikova: not just well, you know we one day we woke up and said, Well, how about we teach cloud computing security. For instance, one of the best courses we have, but we created. When we in every semester we review curriculum, we add new courses, we remove outdated courses. So we pay very close attention to what’s going on in industry.

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Ioulia Rytikova: And, by the way, we also have our department has a great Advisory Board. So we connect with the industry very closely. I forgot to say something, so let me say it here before I forget again. In addition to faculty who are outstanding just. I love working with our faculty. In addition to that, we also invite. It’s called adjunct faculty.

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Ioulia Rytikova: These are, and I don’t know if you’re familiar with the term. But these are industry leaders. They come as guest lecturers. They come as sometimes they teach our classes.

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Ioulia Rytikova: and they are your best contact with the industry. They’re always very supportive of our students. If you want to network. And if you want connections, then that’s what you can do. That’s all. We will always help students connect to the industry. Again. Advisory Board. We have some events, but the college provides some events, but in addition to that your instructors, your professors.

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Ioulia Rytikova: testers they are. They all have Phds.

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Ioulia Rytikova: but they are the ones who are connecting you to the real world, and they help us bridge our program with what’s expected by the industry, we’re very lucky to have that. I will use only one quick example. I teach the 1st one of the 1st courses like database management systems. And what I did this semester I was so happy about that. But we have an outstanding adjunct who is currently the

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Ioulia Rytikova: director for all AI and machine learning initiatives in a very large company. And she teaches in our 2 courses actually in our program, and what she proposed to do is to develop an additional module on AI to be utilized in our classes.

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Ioulia Rytikova: and I was thrilled with this idea. We developed this this module for this semester. For 5, 24. We experimented with that in spring. Students loved it. We received. I always run surveys because I always had students to let me know how we’re doing, and students are very open with me. And the response was outstanding. They said, professors that exact. That’s exactly

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Ioulia Rytikova: what we need to see how everything we learn can be connected to AI. So I am now super excited about the rest of the courses. Hopefully we can add that. But so that was, that’s what I forgot to mention earlier that in addition to professors working full-time professors, we also have industry connections that you might find interesting. And about the curriculum. What I wanted to say is that this curriculum

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Ioulia Rytikova: was developed. We created a task force that was our department industry experts. And we worked on this together. It’s not just what we professors think is important, but we listen to the industry and the new concentration in AI that was developed specifically with the input from our industry contacts.

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Ioulia Rytikova: So if there are any questions about this, we can talk about this, maybe right after the presentation. Maybe we have. I think that’s pretty much it. But let’s look the next slide. If we I believe

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George Mason Online Admissions: That’s that’s the online learning. Can I? Can I ask a question.

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Ioulia Rytikova: So this is just the, and that’s what I wanted to say. So this is the overall. That’s what I probably should. Well, I would like to share with you. And now I’ll be more than happy to answer any question.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Yeah, so please attendees. Don’t be shy because you have the program director here to answer your questions. And I spoke to some of y’all today, and you had questions, but I will ask some of them on your behalf. So what can you tell me? The difference between machine learning and AI is that an.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Oh, well, this is a dangerous question. Thank you for asking since this is recorded, and then people will listen to that. It’s very difficult to answer this question. Let me explain why?

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Ioulia Rytikova: The reason why is because that was

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Ioulia Rytikova: so obvious this last year, when our faculty were developing. This, a, this new concentration. And we developed both undergraduate and graduate because each and single person

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Ioulia Rytikova: has an opinion about what AI is. Each and single person. And it’s in many cases there are some similarities. But I discovered that people see differently. They understand it differently, which is understandable, because AI is such a large area right now, with so many, with so many directions.

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Ioulia Rytikova: that, and new directions that appear every day. Well, well, if I would, the way, I would answer this question, because some people say, Well, machine learning is just one of the parts of AI. Others say that well, they are very different, because they approach data different. So that’s why I’m very careful if we if, when it comes to a definition.

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Ioulia Rytikova: everyone has their own division. But what I want to say is that the way it’s designed in our course in our program? So that’s what I think is important for students. If you look at the machine learning engineering concentration, we focus on Nlp.

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Ioulia Rytikova: so natural language processing.

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Ioulia Rytikova: This is one of the most promising areas right now in again, if

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Ioulia Rytikova: depending on how you classify AI in different directions. But it’s part of that bigger umbrella, and we do have some applications. But mostly it’s again, it’s about natural language processing and data analytics in that field. And what we designed for the applied AI concentration.

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Ioulia Rytikova: we covered fundamentals of AI, not at the Cs level. But still we covered some theory with lots of applications. But it’s still fundamentals.

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Ioulia Rytikova: We also added one more programming language. And what we did for for electives.

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Ioulia Rytikova: We offer different applications, like, for instance, AI inside just examples. But AI in cyber security, AI in big data, analytics, AI in Hci and what our plan might. I’m really excited about about anything in healthcare, but we’re not there yet. But but maybe next step would be we’ll look into that which. So what I’m trying to say is

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Ioulia Rytikova: that that concentration is specifically designed. And we were thinking so much about. There are different ways to design an AI program or AI concentration. I design a lot of programs programs and concentrations and courses. That’s part of my job. And I’ve seen many different approaches. So we we that was a long discussion how to approach that. So we ended up with building strong foundation.

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Ioulia Rytikova: AI, whatever happens, even even if tomorrow they will come up with new ideas, new applications, new directions. But students will have that very solid foundation, and then we will keep adding applications as they appear on the market, so we felt that it will be solid but flexible. And again, as you can see, I’m very excited about it. But machine all other concentrations.

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Ioulia Rytikova: can I, Susan? If I could quickly say something else? Because that’s important.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Of course.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Only yesterday I read another report about this, and I was I was. It’s so interesting. So for the next 5 years directions that I well, the future job directions in. I don’t put an it, but in technical fields.

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Ioulia Rytikova: and I was a bit surprised. I had different directions and not completely different, but slightly different. But they said, number one, AI number 2, big data analytics.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Which.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Was interesting to me, and we have that in it. I was thinking that cyber security always goes first, st I mean, after AI is AI and then cyber security. But I was pleased to say that big data is still here. We were the 1st department who came up with big data direction. And we are very happy about that. We’re still doing this. We are now applying that in AI and machine learning and other fields.

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Ioulia Rytikova: So it is good to see that this direction is still strong. Obviously we have so much data. But I’m curious to see how this will evolve. So all the directions are very good. That’s what I’m trying to say.

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George Mason Online Admissions: That’s amazing. Yes, tech technology is definitely where it’s at. So Mason also offers an online masters of data analytics of engineering.

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George Mason Online Admissions: And so y’all have the ait with the concentration of data, analytics and intelligence methods.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Would you know how they differ.

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Ioulia Rytikova: I do?

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George Mason Online Admissions: Okay. Great.

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Ioulia Rytikova: And the reason why? Because I was one of those people who also participated in the development of that program. I am in our college. I participated in many programs where, if it has been mentioned, then I’m there in that program, probably. And I only say that because if you have any questions. Prospective students, our guests today

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Ioulia Rytikova: I am, please contact me because I am. I am that person who probably has most probably has most answers about about pretty much all these programs.

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Ioulia Rytikova: So I have some good news. Probably I guess the difference is so the data analytics engineering program. That’s an interdisciplinary program. Which means that all departments they contribute to that program.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Now, what? You probably don’t know that the majority of courses in data, analytics, engineering online program, they are provided by our department.

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Ioulia Rytikova: So which means that, yes, there is a difference between this program. I would say on ground program, data, analytics, engineering and our on ground Msaid program, because we provide because we also participate in the Phd program. We provide high level courses and we have directions. But but that program other departments contribute

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Ioulia Rytikova: to it, and they have. I think it. Last year it was 11 concentrations in the on ground program in the online program. It’s only one. It’s only 10 courses, and that’s pretty much what they have. We have a bit more variety, and we provide courses more of

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Ioulia Rytikova: specific courses for each direction.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Oh, wonderful! Well, thank you for clarifying that. So another thing is

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George Mason Online Admissions: this is designed obviously for working professionals. How many hours do you think are spent typically on average.

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Ioulia Rytikova: This is a great question in my course. What I have

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Ioulia Rytikova: once. Once you see our courses. I even have a section on that because I want students to be very clear about the workload.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Well, it largely depends on students background. To be honest, I can give numbers, and I don’t want to scare people, so please don’t run away, but the Us. Department of Education and I have all as a researcher. I can provide links and and and then resources, because that’s how we work

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Ioulia Rytikova: for a 3 credit course students spent up to 6 h additionally at home.

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Ioulia Rytikova: So for one class, for for a free grade course, it’s expected that students will spend up to 9 h per week.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Oh, that’s not bad!

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Ioulia Rytikova: Well

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Ioulia Rytikova: giving that this is a an accelerated program. So it it depends. It might be a little more so.

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Ioulia Rytikova: But but what’s important is again. I don’t want to scare people. This is standard. That’s the national standard that has nothing to do with our program. I don’t want. If somebody tells if you go to master’s program, and they say, Well, you only need to read 1 h in our program. Don’t go there. I don’t know what it is, but just don’t go there. So this is, they’re probably not certified. They’re not. It’s it’s just, don’t go there.

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Ioulia Rytikova: There is no accreditation, most likely, because that’s against the rules. But what I see, what I observe in my classes all the time, and I am again very specific about the amount of work that students complete per week. Because I do educational research. I actually time students. I can see how much time they spent on different activities and assignments.

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Ioulia Rytikova: If students have background. Then it takes less time, and some students even finish again, much faster and largerly, because our courses are very flexible in their design, but I promise it will be a quick story. But it’s important, because in my class, just an example. But again, all our classes are similar.

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Ioulia Rytikova: because in my classes. I provide, for instance, required resources, recommended learning, resources, and optional learning resources. If a student is very new to it, they might need to read a little bit more. If students already know something which also very common, then they can just focus on the required parts of materials when it comes to assignments in my classes. I have options.

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Ioulia Rytikova: I say, if you know this part, or if you feel comfortable, if it’s easier, then pick only 5 problems from this list and complete them. And those act like exercises, practice problems.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Then, in addition to that, I also ask students to work together, and that usually. And it’s done in a very innovative way. Many students are concerned, because they say, Well, if we work together, if the student, one student, didn’t complete their work, then I will not be able to do. No, no, no, the way it’s designed. It’s a completely new idea. It’s designed in a way that each person can work individually, but at the same time they can also work together.

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Ioulia Rytikova: and usually my students work together because we are very supportive. And we, my Gt. And I were very excited about this. So so yes, ours might seem scary a little bit, although again, standard numbers. But it’s very flexible. That’s what I think is important.

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George Mason Online Admissions: That is phenomenal. No, I that’s great. Okay? So y’all please don’t be shy. I don’t see any questions.

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George Mason Online Admissions: I can’t be the one asking all the questions.

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George Mason Online Admissions: But let’s go ahead. Dr, is it okay with you to just move on to a little bit more about how the classes are formatted online. And so if you haven’t spoken with an enrollment coordinator, feel free to reach out to myself or my team and the information the contact information will be on the last slide, and you can actually scan

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George Mason Online Admissions: the code. But and we’d be happy to assist you with the application process. So basically, this program

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George Mason Online Admissions: is a 20 month program, and that equates to 5 semesters. There’s 3 semesters to a year. However, we give you up to. I believe it’s 6 years to complete the degree, you know. God forbid! If you had to take a break, and sometimes people are relying on tuition reimbursement, so they want to parse it out strategically, which isn’t a bad idea. The program consists of 10 to 30 credits.

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George Mason Online Admissions: and we can provide you with that curriculum

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George Mason Online Admissions: and provide you with the tuition and and so forth. So you know, I’ll go ahead and forward it to the next slide.

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George Mason Online Admissions: And so basically.

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George Mason Online Admissions: as an enrollment Coordinator. Again, we’ll provide you with the curriculum and the information on the program, and then the application checklist, which is your guide to apply, and then you’ll have a personal assistant like myself or one of my colleagues that will help, you know, walk you through the process, and it really is very easy. So for the application process. You can use an unofficial transcript for admissions purposes as long as it has a degree conferral on it.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Okay? And then a resume. One professional letter of reference, so it can’t be from a family member or a friend. So a work colleague, Professor Supervisor, and then a personal statement.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Dr. Reticova and the department want to know why you’re interested in this and what your career goals are. So it’s as easy as that. And we’re you’ll have my phone number, my text number, my email. So you know, you can reach out at any time.

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George Mason Online Admissions: And

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George Mason Online Admissions: this is the QR code as well as the contact information. If you have not spoken to anybody yet, but I encourage you to not be shy. It’s not very often that we have the program, director.

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George Mason Online Admissions: just that will ask. Answer your questions. Okay? So.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Alice, do you have any questions not to put you on the spot?

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George Mason Online Admissions: Vishnu? Congratulations on your acceptance.

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George Mason Online Admissions: anybody, Abdullah, thank you for joining us, Megan.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Please don’t be shy, Megan. You had your your hand up earlier, so don’t be shy, and

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George Mason Online Admissions: I guess you’re going to be shy. Everybody’s shy.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Oh, okay, so so.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Susan, thank you so much. Maybe we could wait. Well, 1st of all, I’d like to thank Susan for this amazing, amazing meeting, because I felt I appreciate that I had the chance to to speak about our, to talk about our program, to present it for me. It’s always a pleasure, and I’m happy to talk. I can speak again for hours about this, so thank you for all the questions

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Ioulia Rytikova: I appreciate. Sometimes I try to cover as much as possible. But I understand that students have very specific questions.

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Ioulia Rytikova: and I appreciate that you prepared them in advance. It’s very helpful, thank you. I hope that Susan and I. We answered most of the questions that students have, but what we can do we can stay here for maybe another 5, 10 min until 8 Pm. And then, if anybody thinks of anything, you can stay and then ask

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Ioulia Rytikova: and then put it in the chat window. But we can just wait and see if anybody wants to bring up any questions. But I’d like to thank students for coming, because I understand it’s very late. I’m looking at the window right now, and it’s very late, and I appreciate that you took the time to to be here today. I always tell students

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Ioulia Rytikova: I understand that I should probably kind of drag students to our program. But my goal is to help students find their program. I think this is so important. What I was when I was working most at the undergraduate level, I remember, and I usually, I advise, I work with students, and as an advisor I would say, students who are like 1819

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Ioulia Rytikova: and 20 years old, and they would, and they would be sitting in my office saying, I’m not sure what I’m doing here in this in this program, and this is always kind of sad because they were brought by parents. Or maybe their friends told them. It’s a great program, and we do have a great program. But they say, I just don’t. I just it’s not me. And when I became when I started working with graduate students.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Then that is a completely different population of students. They know what they want to do. They know exactly what they’re interested in, and I encourage everybody check around. I know that data analytics. Engineering also has similar orientation. So you might want to attend that one. Ask questions. That’s a great program. Also, I work with them very, very closely where

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Ioulia Rytikova: where we do a lot of interesting research and also courses. So check it around, see what works best for you, and then reach out to us with questions. We’re here. But that was a wonderful opportunity to meet everybody to talk about the program. So thank you for being here and letting us present that today.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Oh, there’s a question.

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George Mason Online Admissions: There is.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Oh, great question, thank you, Alice. I love this question. Oh, that’s 1 of my favorite questions. All right. So well. 1st of all, the best way to prepare is to be excited. That’s my answer. If a student comes in, that’s what I like again. That’s what I like about graduate students because they know what they want to do.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Healthcare is, as I mentioned earlier, is one of my favorite areas. Because I at the undergraduate level, I developed the whole healthcare concentration and also direction for the department. And it’s very dear to me. I feel that. Well, 1st of all, if that healthcare also has some sort of technical background in it, depending on the specific field

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Ioulia Rytikova: specific specific direction. But if there is some technical background, then that’s a great start and if there is none, then what I would suggest to do you can contact. Let me just put here in the chat window

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Ioulia Rytikova: so, and let me also give me one second one second.

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Ioulia Rytikova: So this is the name of the professor, Dr. Boyco. He over, he teaches, and he designed, and he teaches courses in in. Well, in? Well, I don’t want to say just pure programming, but in courses where programming is

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Ioulia Rytikova: part of the course. So fundamentals of programming. Here we go, and the reason why I mentioned his name is because if students never had it before or programming before, the only small suggestion, not even the recommendation. Small suggestion I have is to maybe to take or to find free.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Just take one of the introductory programming courses just for fun. Honestly, it’s a don’t take it, you know. Just don’t spend like hours and 20 h per day. But look at it so see how it goes.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Dr. Boyko. He’s also he’s well. His primary research is in AI, but he also is very enthusiastic about education. He has a lot of resources to help students prepare for any direction in kind of again programming related directions, I would suggest to contact Dr. Boyko to say, Well, that’s my background, and I

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Ioulia Rytikova: would appreciate if you share with me some ideas and he can give you a list of resources. If for some reason you can’t reach him, send me an email. I have a few resources, too, but I would prefer Dr. Boycott to answer. Alice. Did it help?

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Ioulia Rytikova: Okay, perfect. So again, Doug, you will love talking to Megan. Great question. I love your question because I would like to clarify that so courses are asynchronous. There is no requirement on meeting on a certain day or a certain time at a certain time. They are fully asynchronous.

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Ioulia Rytikova: However, we provide lots of we call them optional opportunities, because we we cannot call them required. We cannot ask students to meet with us like we meet today. We call them optional class meetings, for instance. Then it’s scheduled like in my class, for instance, it’s Monday, 6 pm. In summer, what we but what we also do. I forgot to mention this

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Ioulia Rytikova: but what we also record all our class meetings. And then these recordings, they’re available for students. In addition to that, I forgot about this. But in addition to that, we also have video video recordings for all the course materials that we teach. So the amount of videos that we provide. And it’s in addition to resources that we also recommend.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Because I, for instance, I’m a big believer in open educational resources, and our students have free access to now it’s called linked in learning. But so that’s like huge variety of any course that you’re interested in in a technical course, you can not only technical in business course you can find it there. So we also recommend often those courses

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Ioulia Rytikova: for additional information, different additional materials. Okay. Now, I got carried away. Sorry.

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George Mason Online Admissions: No, that’s great.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Okay.

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George Mason Online Admissions: absolutely. I have a question. So are there a lot because it’s all AI, and it’s so, is there a lot of textbooks to be purchased? Or is it online material.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Great question. Well, I am a big believer in open educational resources, which means it was an initiative, maybe 10 years ago, when it all started. And we, we, our goal was to help students save money because textbooks are extremely expensive. We do have required textbooks, and students always ask, so should I buy it or not? And I will I will not. I will not answer this question. I always say I will not answer this question.

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Ioulia Rytikova: What what we provide is well, 1st of all, videos that when we cover all the topics, pretty much all topics in each week, in addition to that, we also have Powerpoint presentation. Sometimes it’s our voice over Powerpoint presentation recorded, and we explain what it is.

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Ioulia Rytikova: and Powerpoint presentations. They come from the textbook, sometimes some of their textbooks that we require they might be open to public. So our university, for instance, they deserve some of the textbooks.

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Ioulia Rytikova: In addition to that there is something else. Well, there are some other additional resources that students may consider using if they cannot buy the book, although again, we recommend buying the book. It’s it’s better to have a book. But depending on your situation, we we try to provide resources.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Wonderful, and so are the class meetings like Zoom Meetings.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Yes. Yes. Zoom,

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George Mason Online Admissions: Okay, wonderful. So the professor can be in front of like a whiteboard and show on how to do all stuff.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Yep.

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George Mason Online Admissions: That’s amazing. Okay? So there’s another question.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Oh, Megan, again, I’m so happy to be here and answer all these questions. I will be honest with AI concentration. Yes, the plan is to add it to the online program. With it management. We struggled so hard one year ago when we developed the machine learning engine

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Ioulia Rytikova: engineering concentration, then the department voted for that concentration to be added to the online program. We had a choice between Mle and it management. So the department said, Let’s use, let’s go with mle. It management might be considered in the future, but not right now.

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George Mason Online Admissions: It. But if I may interject, so if you really really really want that, it management concentration. But really, really want online, you can start out online, take all the core courses online, and then you can switch to campus for the concentration. Correct.

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Ioulia Rytikova: That’s a wonderful point, Susan. I am so glad you mentioned this. If I could continue on that because I forgot I completely forgot. But that is a great idea. Except for just one course. If again, if you need help, talk to me, I will be happy to help you can. You can take 3 required courses, 3 core courses, because the It management consultation has one

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Ioulia Rytikova: different course. But what I wanted to say is that our on ground program offers courses both in person and online.

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Ioulia Rytikova: So theoretically, the majority of classes can be still completed online in the on-campus program. But I cannot guarantee that because that depends on enrollment and some requirements, our on-ground program has a lot of international students. International students must have at least 2 in-person classes.

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Ioulia Rytikova: That’s why we offer a lot of in-person classes in the on-ground program.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Okay?

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George Mason Online Admissions: And Bishnu had a question.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Let’s see here.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Wanted to know about the different hands-on approaches you might take during these online classes to keep students involved specifically in the mle concentration.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Hmm, well, it depends on the course and on the professor

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Ioulia Rytikova: we are all very different, and we approach. It’s always funny to hear all the discussions with professors. Well, well, you know, I tried this, and it worked, and some professors have.

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Ioulia Rytikova: and I, because we also review each other’s courses, because we we make sure that professional development is also very important to us. So we try to support that. Well, some professors they have, for instance, a semester long project, which means that students will work. That’s what I do. I ask students every week to work on a specific project.

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Ioulia Rytikova: So they design like databases, they design, see something, and they develop that. And then they implement that. And they work with that.

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Ioulia Rytikova: And that’s the ongoing effort. Some professors have projects instead of the final exam, for instance. So that’s especially big data analytics. They have. Let’s a course where they they do a lot of interesting stuff.

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Ioulia Rytikova: So all courses are interesting. We have a lot of courses where students are exposed to some applications where they will need to use programming skills

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Ioulia Rytikova: to work on data. So where they and it’s not necessarily just big data analytics. But with machine learning engineering. Specifically, we will ask students to work with data to analyze data to build models.

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Ioulia Rytikova: But again, our approach I wanted to be very clear that our approach is

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Ioulia Rytikova: hands on. So it’s not like that that you will read some theory, and then you will be guided. We provide like, if it’s a lab. But then we also have labs, then, in addition to. So we have lots of options. But labs, they’re guided labs. That which means you will have steps. And you also. That’s what how you complete that. That’s the output that you expect, and then

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Ioulia Rytikova: and then professors will help you to get through this treaties will help you to get through that. I’m not sure if I if I answered the question, was it helpful?

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Ioulia Rytikova: Okay, yes, thank you so much. Yes, it’s it’s a bit different for different professors. So it’s which I think, is is also helpful because, it’s interesting to see how experts in different fields, how they present the knowledge and they how they interact with students. So I see a lot of.

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Ioulia Rytikova: And again, we have guest speakers from industry. They just show you specifically what they do with their everyday jobs in AI and machine learning. So that’s very exciting to me. It’s exciting.

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George Mason Online Admissions: That’s amazing.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Okay, so it is a couple minutes past 8.

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George Mason Online Admissions: So guess last call.

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Ioulia Rytikova: And thank you so much for your time, Dr. Reticova, I can tell you’re very enthusiastic.

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Ioulia Rytikova: Enjoy. I can stay with you for another 2 h.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Oh, my goodness!

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Ioulia Rytikova: Just talk about it. But the best way is to check around to look at other programs that that there are available out there, and no matter which program you choose. If it’s something that is interesting that excites you, that you think that

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Ioulia Rytikova: that you will enjoy learning that just a quick story, I promise. But 2 days ago I’ve met one of them, one of the prospective students and mid-career, and she works in a very large retail, very large, very, very large, retail company.

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Ioulia Rytikova: and she’s she was so enthusiastic about data she was so the way she spoke about it, and and she and she just. And I was thinking, even if data, this field data will data, science will be will be still very, very hard. But even if it was not very hard. She was so intrigued by data. Then if

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Ioulia Rytikova: if if when she gets to the program, she already she’s in the program, and when she gets there, then she will be successful, no matter what, because she was so excited about it. And that’s what I always tell students check around, look around, come back with questions, but we are happy to support you. We’re very happy to work with students, and we’ll we’ll enjoy working with you. So

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Ioulia Rytikova: I hope that you will find a good program.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Well, I might sign up, and I’m not a text I’m not tech, savvy?

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Ioulia Rytikova: To us.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Okay.

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George Mason Online Admissions: well, thank you. So so very much. And attendees. Thank you so much for joining us. I hope it was informative for you, as it was for me

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George Mason Online Admissions: and Dr. Berticova any final comments before we.

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Ioulia Rytikova: No, no, just thank you, thank you. I’m very happy to see students interested in education, not students, guests, attendees who are interested, who took the time to be here. That’s for us. This is again for us. It’s our future, and we care a lot about it, and I hope that

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Ioulia Rytikova: we will see you in our classes. I still have that hope, and I wish you everyone. I wish you good luck, with all the plans and ideas and excitement that you have about your future education.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Thank you so much, everyone. Thank you, doctor, and thanks.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Bye. Goodbye. Have a good night.

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George Mason Online Admissions: Bye-bye.