Virtual Open House MS Applied Information Technology Transcript

George Mason Online Admissions: Alrighty, so I guess we’ll get started. So, I want to welcome everybody to the Master’s of Science in Applied Information Technology. I am Tangy, I am your… I am an enrollment specialist here. And so, just some kind of housekeeping things. If you have any questions throughout the PowerPoint or anything like that, please feel free to drop them in the chat or in the Q&A, and we will get to those and get those answered. Other than that, I want to present to you our presenter, Ms. Yulia. And she’s gonna take it from here.

Ioulia Rytikova: All right. Well, thank you very much, and thank you for coming today. My name is Dr. Riti Kova. I am a full-time faculty in the Department of Information Sciences and Technology. This department has multiple programs, but today we’ll discuss the Master of Science of Applied Information Technology that we offer online. I can actually, maybe. move to the next slide. Just a few words about myself. I’ve been in this department for quite some time. I was, for a long time, from the beginning, from the beginning of times, I was the director of this online program, but recently, they changed, I got promoted, and they changed my title. Now it’s Associate Chair for Academic Excellence, which makes me extremely happy, and I will talk more about this in a moment, but in our days, I sometimes feel like I’m jealous of myself, because this is probably the best time for educators to go, to help students get through their education, because of the AI, all the incredible opportunities that it brings to the classroom. And I will talk a little bit about it, because it’s something that, again, many faculty are extremely excited about. But before we start, I wanted to have… well, it would be nice if we have a little bit of conversation going on, and what helps a lot of students who are attending today, if you could maybe put in the chat window, hello, and just maybe say a few words about yourself, if you could introduce yourself. That would be fantastic. If you feel comfortable speaking up, that’s also great, but I don’t insist if whatever is comfortable for you is perfectly fine. Maybe in the chat window, could you maybe say hello, and Maybe, say what… your name, maybe? Or at least you can confirm if you can hear me, just to make sure that… Boom. Oh, okay. So…

George Mason Online Admissions: needing to see if anyone’s confirming. Let’s see here… Show that they’re there. It’s one second.

Ioulia Rytikova: All right, just to make sure, meanwhile, I don’t know if, if anybody can hear me, but, it reminds me of one story. Long, long, long time ago, we’ve been teaching online for forever, just forever, our department. But in one of my first classes, oh, yes, I remember that I was teaching, and I was doing an online lecture, I was so excited. And then 10 minutes late, it turned out that I got disconnected, so students didn’t hear me. All right, so yes, Mariam, thank you, Mariam, and welcome! It’s so wonderful that you could join us today. Thank you very much. So you can hear us, this is great. So if anybody, Mariam, Maureen, great that you’re here. If you would like to say a few words about yourself, I can see your name and other students. If you want to, just to, again, to introduce yourself, it would be fantastic, because this way, I know that we are working together. Oh, there is another student, so Tracy, thank you so much for coming. We’re trying to confirm if you can hear. So, in the chat window, maybe you can say, hello, and you could introduce yourself if you want to. That would be great. Just in case if you didn’t hear the first part, my name is Dr. Ritikova. I oversee the Master of Science in Applied Information Technology, which we offer online, and today we’ll go over the program. If you have any questions, please stop me anytime. Because, as you will see in just a moment, I’m… I’m so… I’m so enthusiastic about our program. I love our program, and everything we do is always… I’m very passionate about it. Well, the first thing I wanted to say is that, in general, whether it’s online or it’s in person, many of our students who take classes online They often come on campus, because many of our students, they’re actually in the area, and this is a great place to be. George Mason University is a very large institution. We are one of the largest universities probably in the country. Not the largest, but we are very large. It’s over 35,000 students, and we are very close to DC. I love going to DC. there are so many interesting visitors, and museums, and exhibitions, and clubs, and some meetings, and everything. It’s such a great vibe. And in addition to that, so just in general, the location is amazing, but I should probably focus more, I apologize, I kind of got excited about the overall social life, because I think it’s important. But what’s more… even more important is that we are surrounded by industry. We have great connections. We have another campus in Arlington, and we are very close to Amazon, for instance, we have great relationships with them. But just overall, there are so many IT government and industry companies, they work with us, they come and teach our classes, because we have lots of guest speakers, we have adjunct faculty who are experts in the field, and they come and share their knowledge with us, with our students. The university itself is, again, very large in the best way possible. It’s very vibrant. It has lots of students from all over the world. We have a very diverse community. If you look at all the ranks, then we rank very, very high in terms of diversity. We welcome students from every background. every angle, we have them all. We are very proud to be the R1 university, which means highest research activity, and research grows very fast in George Mason, and that goes back, the reason why it’s important, it goes back to our classrooms, and our teachers and instructors and faculty, they are actively involved in cutting-edge research, and they bring it back, they share it. experience and knowledge, and our students benefit tremendously from that. In addition to that, what I personally… again, I’ve been working at George Mason for quite some time, but I am always happy to say that, especially in our department, but pretty much everywhere you go, our students are so supported. We have student success coaches, we have advisors. our faculty are very supportive. You can check even online some of the comments the students provide. And we do care a lot about our students. In our department, we have a great team, so, again, there are different roles. Success Coach will help you to register, get the classes, and answer all the questions, literally 24-7. We have a great team of advisors, so any moment you have any doubts, or concerns, or questions, or something unusual is happening in your life, you can contact them, and they immediately respond within 24 hours. We have one of the best teams, well, I would say, in the university, so that’s very, again, that’s a great place to be for students. Well, this is probably my favorite slide, because not only George Mason is a unique place and an incredible place to be, but the program itself, MS in AI, in AIT, Applied Information Technology, that’s probably one of the most exciting programs In our days, because I… because, again, in IT, in technology, everything changes so fast that, you really want to be in a program or to work in a company that is very energetic, which is young and dynamic, that responds to, market demands like that, and that’s what our department does. We are… well known to be one of the most interdisciplinary by nature. It’s not because we’re proud of this, because we work so hard on that. It has nothing to do with us. It’s by definition. We have so many faculty that work in numerous areas in IT, different areas of research. It’s applied AI, it’s machine learning, big data, big data analytics, intelligence methods, it’s HCI, human-computer interaction, cybersecurity, almost forgot about this. Well, you can pick pretty much anything you’re interested in, and we will have that. More importantly, our program, it’s all about hands-on. We love hands-on activities. We often get a question from students, what’s the difference between the CS department, computer science. And the difference is very straightforward. The computer science department deals a lot with the theory, so they build fundamental concepts, theoretical concepts, and they build applications. And our students, we teach them to apply that knowledge. So, we also have some theory, we also talk about that, but our goal is to make sure students can get everything, those top interesting ideas that exist today, put them together and solve real-world problems, and apply that to complex questions, and then, bring some knowledge, again, into that real world with experience we provide for them. So, in general, our department makes sure that we do support, not support, but we respond to. to market, job market, as well as possible. We have a great advisory board, we work with industry leaders, we communicate with them all the time. Our curriculum is industry-based curriculum. We make sure that we address all the questions that industry comes and brings to us, and they say. That’s what we’re looking for. Only last month, we had a meeting with the advisory board, and we spent quite some time discussing what our current needs of industry from our graduates. When we say we, our department, when we say we produce career-ready graduates, what does it mean today? Everything has changed so quickly. so much, drastically with AI. And again, I’m one of the biggest supporters of AI, because I believe this is our partner, and it will make our life much better, stronger, and we will be able to solve even more interesting problems in the nearest future. We just need to figure out how to do this. But nevertheless, we work closely with industry, we make sure that we provide courses, new courses, regularly. For instance, right now, I’m very proud to say that we just created this fall a new concentration supplied AI technology, and that became extremely popular. We’ve got so many requests about this. Even while we were working on it last year, and I just mentioned that it’s coming, students got so excited that they say, can we please apply right now? And then you can figure it out. No, no, no, wait, we just need to prepare it first. and then you can come and work with us. The cybersecurity concentration is one of our top concentrations We have… we were ranked very highly nationally, specifically for the cybersecurity concentration offered online, but we also have great concentrations on data analytics and machine learning engineering, and if you’re interested in specifics, then depending on what your interest is, and depending on what kind of job you’re looking for in the future, then you you might have some preferences. At the same time, the way we design the curriculum is quite fluid, I would say, and flexible, in a good way. So we have very strict list of students, courses that students need to complete, but at the same time, some of the courses can be applied to different concentrations, and that’s why you might see some overlap between applied AI and machine learning. Which means if you don’t know exactly what you want to do, whatever concentration you choose, you will still be very well prepared. Well, and so in addition to what I just discussed, there are also a few things that make our program quite unique, and I’m, again, very proud of that, of our program. Not necessarily because I worked with our colleagues very, very hard. We wanted to make sure that we delivered top result, and I always say, when COVID happened. And then, some of the, some of the, some, some were saying that, oh, yes, we have now experience online, teaching online, because we, well, after COVID, everyone is an expert. We were experts before that. Our department developed the first online program over 10 years ago, now it’s maybe 12, 15 years ago, and as the director for, for online education. in our college, Professor Garrison, what he says is that it’s not only that we developed this program, we’re the first department who developed the entire program online, and it’s all, it’s BS, it’s MS, so our students can have this pathway. But more importantly, we developed policies, procedures, and best practices in online education that were, adopted later by the university. In our days, it seems like, again, everyone can do, can teach online, but there is a big difference if you teach online courses professionally, or it’s just, well, people who are, who try this a few times, and they think it, well, that’s how it should be. I’m not criticizing other courses or programs, because every are doing their best when they present their work, but the way we approached that, it was at the departmental level, so all the courses that we developed for the online program, they are developed using the same template, the same approach, it’s media-rich, collaborative learning environments. We have, the template that we use for all the across all courses, makes it really easy for students to transfer from one course to another, and that’s a great advantage. In our online program, as in many online programs, because research indicates the best approach for such programs is to offer classes in 8 weeks, and that’s what we do. So students take one 8-week class, and then the next, the second 8-week class in the second half of the semester. And because the course is, well, it’s a fast-paced course, and students have to learn so much, then having this template, and having the same, even colors, even the structure, even modules that we use, even videos are placed in the same, in the same way. So although courses cover different topics, different material. is presented, but nevertheless, the overall feeling, it’s like you go through one course and you feel comfortable, then you move on to the next one. And it still feels very comfortable because it’s a new subject, but you know the environment so well by now that you can easily navigate, and it’s quite comfortable for students. So, again, we have professionally made classes, and what we also do in our department, and it’s, quite, quite important. Our faculty are trained in online education, again, in addition to a lot of, many years of experience. And, we are very active in direct…

George Mason Online Admissions: Okay, guys, looks like we lost Eula there. Hopefully she’ll be able to jump back on. There we go!

Ioulia Rytikova: Something happened.

George Mason Online Admissions: to clean.

Ioulia Rytikova: as I was saying, and I was just… I kept doing, and then it turned out that I disappeared, so thank you for your patience. I appreciate this. But, so going back to our classes, I hope that you heard that, again, we’re professionally developed classes, online courses, but our professors stay in touch with students very closely. Most of us, I teach also in that program. Most of us, we offer weekly meetings with students, although that’s advertised as an asynchronous course, so you don’t have to come, but we offer that opportunity for students to come to every week to meet with the professor and discuss any questions. Professors usually go over some specific topics or challenging questions, and they communicate students. In addition to that, we also have graduate teaching assistants, and they also hold office hours weekly, so students can also see a teaching assistant if they need any help. In general, our response rate is within 24 hours, because our courses are so fast-paced that we cannot afford answering questions in 3, 4, 5 days. usually it’s within one day. And in general, we make sure that students communicate with, with other students in class. Sometimes we try to create… there are lots of activities on campus that everyone is welcome to attend and to be a part of that students could build these connections and networking. And again, as I mentioned, it’s… they’re very flexible, they’re fully online, 24-7, you get support, and in general, it works really nice. Well, great news about, the kind of, the kind of, ex… the kind of, experts we are, we, we help students to become the kind of experts that are quite, in high demand in, on the current market. what you… I always get the question about, so what are those possible, jobs and titles that I can… I can… I can look for? My answer is always very tricky, because even… even though I have a list of some examples on the screen, but this is nothing compared to what you can find on all those job search places. Because in our days, jobs have very different, disc… well, titles, or jobs… job titles, basically. And what I recommend students to do is not to look for a specific title, although it’s a good start. You can just check, for instance, oh, maybe AI engineering. But you need to look at the list of skills that they, those jobs request, and that’s how you can figure out what you can do. The variety is incredible in our days, and salary projections are also… it’s like… it’s like a huge range, and what you see on the screen, I was… this is just averages, so it’s not, it’s not the range of values. But if you look at what’s available out there and check the skills that they ask students to have, then you can find much more positions and titles than what you see on the screen. Nevertheless, I think it’s quite impressive, and I hope that you will have a chance to check some of these positions, and maybe our area is quite good in offering these opportunities for students. Well. A quick question about the curriculum. What our goal is, again, and I keep saying that our goal is to build a great foundation for students. In our days, it’s particularly important because technology changes so fast, and I know that many people are concerned about AI. I’m not necessarily concerned in general, the way how maybe most people say it. AI offers so many opportunities for students, but it is true that some jobs will disappear. We try to address all these changes in our curriculum, that’s why we update courses, we offer, again, flexible opportunities for students. But it’s important to… whatever happens, we can teach all the technologists today, and then, I don’t know, not even in 2 years, but in 6 months from now, most of these technologies might change, they might disappear, or we’ll come up with new technologies. What’s important is to build that strong foundation. And in our… if you check all the research in our days, then everybody says that new skills that are required, that’s critical… well, actually, it was always required, but now they become critically important. And, well, critical thinking, higher order, thinking skills, creativity also, collaborative skills, presentation skills. All these skills that in the past they would call… they were called, like, soft skills, and in the past, we were saying, oh, so we need to learn hard skills first, or content, and now it’s, it’s shifted a little bit. And because of that, if we know that students have that great foundation, they understand how foundation works. And they can easily apply AI to support them. That’s what our advisory board told us last month. They said, if we… if we define it in one simple sentence, all we want students to be able to do is, this is a problem. You get an I, or don’t get an I, but now everybody uses I, you use the I, then you apply that and then you explain whether it makes sense or not. So, again, this logical thinking, that evaluation, understanding how understanding of fundamental principles of complex problems, that becomes more important. In our program, all students have a list of so-called core courses. Again, it was defined by… we designed… this program was designed, well, some time ago, the initial version of the program, and we worked with… not only with the department, we worked with industry, we worked with agencies and national leaders, and we made sure that we address all the aspects of what might be important for an IT expert in the future. We defined a set of four courses that build that foundation for students, and then they continue with multiple concentrations. This might be a bit… the slide here is a bit busy, because there are so many courses here, but it basically lists six courses for each concentration. We have four core courses, and then for each concentration, six courses. In general, students complete two courses per semester, so you can complete the entire program in less than two years, but we don’t recommend taking more than two courses per semester, never, but we make sure that we offer courses consistent. That would be spring and summer and fall semester. There is no gap, and students can continue taking classes as much as… as many as they want to. So again, if you want to take a look at that, and then feel free to ask questions, I will be happy to answer, but we have a lot of faculty who are, well, we… well. I can’t say a lot, because this is, this is not exactly a correct statement, but we have faculty who were recognized in their teaching efforts. They received multiple awards on teaching and learning, innovative teaching and learning awards. We have such awards at the institutional level, at the level of our college. And our department has multiple faculty members who are experts in teaching complex concepts and helping students to get through this program. This is also important because this program is open to pretty much everyone. This is another difference between CS and us. In the CS department, one of the strongest requirements is higher-level math. And programming also, in our department, we make sure that we help students build those fundamentals. If a student is not an expert in IT, or they don’t have a lot of IT experience, or if their bachelor degree is in a different field, we offer what’s called a provisional admission. And what it simply means is that we ask the student to take one of the courses within those 10 courses. It will be a prep course, which will prepare students for the following more advanced courses in programming, and this way, students… the majority of students, pretty much everyone is very successful in this program. And, the last slide for today is that I actually talked about this earlier, but, the way we design our classes, again, we make sure that we stay connected with students. That’s not only faculty, but also GTAs, or, teaching assistants. We respond immediately, within 24 hours. Students never stay there, just alone. All our faculty are very experienced. They have years of experience teaching online in a professional setting, not just up here and there, but they actually, they’ve done some training, and they worked on, on their courses for quite some time. They developed and designed with professional help their courses, so the quality of their courses is quite impressive. And our goal is to create the kind of course that is very straightforward, that is easy to follow, easy to understand, so we make sure that we provide this intuitive progression for the course for many students. And, well, and what’s important is that we make sure that we help students stay connected, not only with us professors, but also with students, with study groups. I have one example which I always share with prospective students. I was surprised even myself, but in one of my online classes, again, I meet with students, and then we discuss something, and then suddenly I started receiving some sort of invitations. It turned out, maybe… so, it turned out that students decided to create focus groups, or working groups, and one of the groups, some of those groups, they were… we have collaborative assignments, so in my class, for instance, students, they are assigned to a group, and then I help them work together and learn together without, all the issues that usually happen with teams, so the way… I’m an expert in cognitive design, so I make sure that students feel very comfortable working with their teams, and they actually enjoy that experience. But in addition to that, students created groups, and some of those groups were meeting even on campus, and the exchange of emails, the exchange of excitement and enthusiasm between students was so impressive. I absolutely loved it. So, we try to create this kind of environment for students, and overall, when you meet our faculty, you will see that most of us are very enthusiastic about what we do, we are curious about our subjects, and we try to do our best. Well, this is my part. Thank you very much for your attention, I really appreciate it. If there are any questions, I will be happy to answer, but if not, then we can just show the next slide with a list of steps, 1, 2, 3, and you apply.

George Mason Online Admissions: I… we do have one question, and it came from Jacob, and this is a pretty good question, too, as well. This is a question we usually get to. What is the difference between the data analytics and the intelligence concentration for the MSAIT compared to the MS program for data analytics engineering?

Ioulia Rytikova: Love this question, thank you. I forgot to say this, because I keep saying CS department and us, and that’s a very common question. But the second most common question is the difference between the data analytics engineering program and our program. I feel very comfortable answering this question for a simple reason. I was the person who initially help the data analytics department develop their courses for their online program. And most of the courses in that program, they come from our department. I am not saying that they are the same, they’re different, the focus is different. Programs are designed a little bit differently, the way students go through their courses, it’s a bit different. They also have slightly different admission requirements than what we do, and what’s important is… I don’t know how important it is to students, but still, the data analytics program, it’s not a department, it’s a program which is interdisciplinary program, and it means that all the departments in our college they participate in this program by providing their courses. And again, our department provides most of the courses in that program, but they still have, some… one course from the CES department, computer science, a few courses from Operations… well, some other departments also, I don’t know exactly, because this is not my field. And the way it works, so we usually for, in many cases, a bit more advanced courses in our program, in that specific concentration. What I would say, it’s not just about the concentration, you can get pretty much the same courses here and there. But the focus of the program is a bit different, the data analytics engineering. And if you’re interested in that program, then I would suggest contacting them. Professor Baldo is the director of that program. I think they just had their orientation last week. I spoke with him yesterday, so he mentioned that But they will be happy to answer specific questions about their program. But again, in general, our program, it’s not just about the concentration. Courses, you could get pretty much the same courses, but ours have a bit more options for our students, because it’s our courses. But it’s mostly about the difference in admission requirements, so our program is designed to support a very, diverse background of students. We can work with… we can help students prepare for more advanced courses within our program. So, that would be probably… that would be more important even than, specific concentrations. I hope it helps, but if there are any follow-up questions, I would be happy to answer.

George Mason Online Admissions: Yep, I think we have one follow-up. He had a two-part question to that, and you kind of touched on it a little bit, too, though. He said, which background would be best for someone for each program?

Ioulia Rytikova: All we require? This is a great question, and that’s what the difference between us and many other departments and programs, that we welcome everyone. If you have a BS degree, 3.0 or above, then we welcome every student. And we are very used to work with that, again, very, very different, population of students. Not in this class, but what, so the MSAIT program, as an example, it’s offered, fully online, that’s what we’re discussing right now, but we also offer, this program with on-ground classes, and then hybrid classes. It’s the same program, but it just offers on-ground, in-person classes. And in my in-person class, for instance, for the… I teach database classes, so it’s also in this program. And in that class, I have students who are master students from two different programs, and specifically data analytics and us. I have PhD students, I have students who are in the accelerated master’s program, who are technically… are still BS students. I also have students from other schools and departments, and that’s what… and this is exactly who we are. We are very open, and we are very used. We designed this program specifically to be offered to, pretty much everyone who is interested in getting a degree in IT, and we make sure that we have this prep course, we, we have lots of hands-on activities, usually our students are, feel very comfortable when they go through the program. So. Again, IT would be… to answer your specific question, I’m sorry, a simple question, the best would be IT, IT background, but it’s not necessary. It helps, but it’s not necessary.

George Mason Online Admissions: Awesome, that was great. That concluded our questions.

Ioulia Rytikova: No, it shouldn’t.

George Mason Online Admissions: process, that’ll be great.

Ioulia Rytikova: Wonderful. So, alright, the admissions process is, is handled quite… well, that’s, that’s another part that I, I like about this program, that we have, they’re called success coaches. These are trained and professionally trained, advisors, I would say, but their goal, I love the term. success coaches. It’s when the university came up with this idea. I was so happy, because, yes, that’s exactly what we need. And if you’re interested, then we can share, with anybody who is interested in our program, how to conduct our success coaches, and then you submit an official transcript, your resume, one letter of recommendation. We reduced it to only one letter. because in the past, we had three, then we said, well, maybe it’s too much. And then, for certain reasons, we decided to go with only one letter of recommendation, and your personal statement, which explains why you want to apply to our program. And again, I encourage everyone, if you’re interested, I encourage… I am the person who… we have a committee. I don’t do it myself, but I am… I chair this committee, and we review, we review applications every week. We are very fast at this, by the way. As soon as the application package comes to our department, then within a few days, you will hear from us. But what I’m trying to say is that I’ve seen a lot of personal statements, and I really appreciate when students explain why they want to get into the program, and also if there are any concerns that you have, like, for instance, many students say, I don’t have a background in IT, but I’m interested, and because of that, I got for instance, one of the technical certifications, or I completed a programming course. It could be just any open educational course, and you can complete there, but that effort that shows, I’ve done this and that, that will explain us why you’re interested and what specifically brings you to our program. So, you don’t have to write a long personal statement. But if it explains your vision for yourself, and why this program is important, it always helps to get a few more points when you are evaluated by the community.

George Mason Online Admissions: Great, great, great, great. Well, I guess there is no more questions from here. If any of you all have any more, or if you decide maybe questions come up later, if you’re after reviewing the application process or anything like that, please feel free to reach out to your enrollment specialist. I am also an enrollment specialist. I’m pretty sure I’ll drop my name really quick in the chat. You’re more than welcome to reach out to me, too, as well, and I’m here to answer any questions, or just any follow-up about the application, and to help you walk you through the application process, because that’s what we do. So you’re not at it alone, and so we just kind of help you through that process. But if there’s not any more questions at this time, I guess we’ll go ahead and conclude it from here, and you all have a great evening.

Ioulia Rytikova: Oh, well, thank you very much, Tenji, for being here today, and I also wanted to thank students, and the last part, just last sentence that I always say, that I know often it feels like we need to drag students to our programs. I always say, I hope that you can attend as many orientations as you can, and listen and ask questions, and compare. and then choose the program you will enjoy. So that’s the most important part. We have a great program, we have wonderful faculty, and we’re here to support you. What Denji just said, you’re not alone. That’s… you can’t even imagine what it means. It’s every time when I say, because I communicate very closely with everyone, and I see those emails and stories, oh, we called the student today, and we sent an email today, and then Two hours later, the student responded, and we contacted this person, that person, so it’s just… sometimes by the end of the day, it’s already resolved. All the problems are solved by the end of the day, but when I see the amount of work behind the scenes, it’s so impressive, and I feel our students are very lucky. Nevertheless, I hope that everyone will find a great program, and I wish you success in your path, and if you have any questions. We’re happy to answer. Thank you very much, and bye!

George Mason Online Admissions: Bye, guys!

Ioulia Rytikova: Goodbye.