Hello Sajitha, I help direct the HCI program at Iowa State and can offer you some basic info, though I'm not going to try to sell it--it may not be for you.
As of May 2009 we had 109 students in our graduate program: - 50 Ph.D. on campus - 25 M.S. on campus - 16 M.S. Online (distance) - 18 Certificate (distance) The MS Online requires the core curriculum, some electives, and a capstone project that demonstrates knowledge of the core courses. (The MS on campus requires a thesis.) The Certificate consists of taking our 4 core courses only, and is sometimes used as an on-ramp to the MS Online. "Online" means that you take courses asynchronously by watching faculty on video and participating in online discussion forums. Some faculty encourage synchronous participation of off-campus students (we use Adobe Connect) so that you can participate in class via audio or chat. That's never required, but it often enriches the experience. We base our curriculum on the ACM recommendations for an HCI curriculum, which means we include our programming course, Computational Perception, in the core. Because you'll almost inevitably work with software developers in HCI-related work at some point, having walked in their shoes briefly helps you appreciate their perspective. If the most technical thing you've done is website design, a programming course may feel scary, but I can assure you that many students on and off-campus who have never programmed have made it through, albeit with some dedicated hard work. The Engineering Distance Education group of Iowa State's Engineering College handles the logistics of the distance ed, which is usually useful for off-campus students because they're your first stop for technology issues and have full time staff for that, rather than making you chase me down, say, if I were teaching your course. The students in our MS Online range in background significantly, and most are employed full-time. They come from all over the world. If you have more questions feel free to email me or contact Pam Shill, our program coordinator. Check out the requirements and core courses on our website: http://www.hci.iastate.edu. Pam's phone number is there on the lower left nav. Good luck! Stephen . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . Posted from the new ixda.org http://www.ixda.org/discuss?post=43756 ________________________________________________________________ Welcome to the Interaction Design Association (IxDA)! To post to this list ....... [email protected] Unsubscribe ................ http://www.ixda.org/unsubscribe List Guidelines ............ http://www.ixda.org/guidelines List Help .................. http://www.ixda.org/help
