Sucking It Up at Centenary
Written: Jun 26 '09
|
Product Rating:
|
|
|
Pros: Convenience of online classes and a good value in cost.
Cons: Disappointing student-teacher interaction.
The Bottom Line: Until new leadership recognize and change some of the flaws and shortcomings of the program, I wouldn't recommend Centenary.
|
|
|
| dncswknivs's Full Review: Centenary College |
I recently completed a degree at Centenary College where I was enrolled in their online MBA program. Two years of nearly daily participation in the program provided an in-depth look at some of the strengths and weaknesses of Centenary College, and this program in particular.
As one might expect, Centenary’s online MBA program is conducted entirely over the internet utilizing the BlackBoard environment. The only time I ever actually had to visit the Centenary office in Parsippany was to pick up my student ID.
The online format is convenient for the schedules and lifestyles of working professionals, stay-at-home parents and others with busy schedules. Therein, Centenary offers a valuable service. Professionally speaking, I think that the online environment is not as transparent as a traditional classroom setting when it comes to accountability – one of its major shortcomings in controlling quality from an administrative perspective.
The curriculum of their MBA program is competitive and up-to-date with what is being taught elsewhere. Textbooks and course content are similar to those at other learning institutions.
The Environment
BlackBoard is a common, web-based, collaborative educational tool used by both online and traditional classes. It provides an environment for students and teachers to post threaded discussions. It also serves as the “homeroom” for the class, a place where teachers can post the syllabus, announcements and assignments and where students can post completed assignments, review each other’s work and send and receive messages. In addition, Blackboard provides links to online libraries and academic research sources. BlackBoard is not unique to Centenary. It is used by many educational institutions.
For both students and teachers, BlackBoard and e-mail are the two most indispensible methods of communication in Centenary’s online program. We often got into the habit of sharing other contact information like home phone and mobile numbers at the beginning of each class, and on occasion organized in-person group meetings to help facilitate communications. Telephone conferences became the norm for discussing large projects among our teams.
Class Requirements
Each class required multiple weekly postings by students on assigned topics of discussion. Secondary and tertiary postings were often required, with minimum word count, and proper citing of and reference to multiple academic and scholarly sources.
Syllabus requirements also dictated supplemental readings, weekly papers, team projects, case studies and journals or reflection papers. The work load wasn’t light by any means, but it was an appropriate volume of work for an MBA-level program. As it was an accelerated program, each class lasted six weeks. Centenary has since revised its online program to eight-week classes, which I’ll touch on later.
The Student-Teacher Relationship
Student-teacher interaction was the most frustrating thing to deal with at Centenary. My experiences ranged from a lack of consistency in approach to teaching various courses to simply a lack of instruction at all!
Take one example: one professor held an M.B.A. and a J.D. (Law Degree), wrote his doctoral thesis on securities fraud, earned an L.L.M. in Banking, Corporate and Finance Law, is a member of the New York, New Jersey and Massachusetts Bar Associations, held a NASD series 4, 7 & 63 certifications and is a member of Mensa.
His credentials were outstanding, and he was presumably quite knowledgeable about the course material. In week one he responded to nearly all of our posts in the threaded discussion pages. In week two his responses were fewer, and in week three has responded to perhaps half a dozen posts, mostly with one-sentence questions!
This behavior was typical of most Centenary professors who “get the ball rolling” and then rarely offer anything of value from their own insight and experiences. In effect they do not TEACH the class but end up being arbiters and paper graders.
That lack of participation (as well as the lack of participation by students which I’ll expound on more below) renders the MBA program to something analogous to a glorified correspondence course.
When questioned, the Centenary administration assured us that they expect teachers to be involved in the class, but in practice, it wasn’t enforced. That doesn’t mean the program was useless; it does however requires much more study and effort on the part of the student to make it worthwhile.
Academic Quality
That brings me to student participation which varied widely. Not withstanding Centenary’s Rubrics for participation which specifically address quality of work, I find that many students are more focused on the quantity of work rather than the quality, and this is implicitly encouraged by Centenary professors who rarely “call a student out” when their postings do not meet the quality objectives (perhaps because they are not reading them? Or are they afraid to challenge a student whose work is below par?).
This was problematic because it cheapened the discussions which are supposed to be part of the mechanism by which we learn. In fact, threaded discussion questions were our only opportunity for a two-way exchange between “teacher” and “class” as there is no physical classroom opportunity to further explore course material.
At the end of each class we had the opportunity to give a formal evaluation. On many occasions my feedback was acknowledged, but few of the problems were addressed and became recurrent throughout the program. I did experience one or two significant positive improvements as a result of our evaluations, but on the whole they didn’t seem to have much impact.
Learning at a Gallup
As previously mentioned, the program was based upon classes six weeks in length. The pace required to cover all the course material in six weeks was tremendous. It necessitated either not addressing some topics in class, or failing to achieve the depth that would more appropriate. Shortly after the end of my program Centenary changed to eight week classes, an obvious admission that six-week classes just weren’t an appropriate length.
Administration
On the billing and paperwork side, I found the back office support provided by the Centenary administration to be helpful, timely and professional. My advisor was friendly and quick to answer any questions.
Cost
Post-secondary education in any form is expensive, MBAs even more so. Centenary does offer value in their cost structure with the tuition of an MBA running far less than competitors. The online environment helps to mitigate those costs. They are also very flexible in working with employer provided tuition reimbursement.
The Final Verdict
If I were asked today to recommend Centenary College’s online MBA program to peers or colleagues, I would be very hesitant to do so. The quality of the course content is commensurate with that of other programs, but it’s the way that the program is administered which needs to change before I could recommend it in good faith. Centenary needs to take the feedback of it customers (students) more seriously.
Recommended:
No
|
|
|
|
Epinions.com ID:
dncswknivs
|
|
Location: USA
Reviews written: 70
Trusted by: 23 members
About Me:
Traveler and writer, I've traversed four continents and 16 countries.
|
|
|
- Add to My Yahoo!: 
- Add to Google Homepage: 
© 1999-2009 Shopping.com, Inc.