Harvard Extension School Student Forum
Come discuss with other HES students in a new forum who are at Harvard Extension School. Talk about life in and around Cambridge, Boston, classes, school, Harvard University, course reviews, and more. Interested in the best ways to travel to Harvard for your residency requirement? Check out the 'On and Around Campus' category for tips and advice. Want to join a book club with other Harvard Extension School students that read through the Harvard Classics? It's a Harvard education in and of itself. ExtensionStudentForum Forum categories include 'Job Postings & Job Seekers', 'Extension Confidential', 'Professional Graduate Certificates', 'HBX', 'ALB' and 'ALM' discussions. Extension Student Forum is brought to you by The Degree Tracker.
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This forum is exclusively for Harvard University students. The sponsor for this forum is an exciting new web app, The Degree Tracker. Track and plan your Harvard Extension School ALM and ALB degrees or professional graduate certificate. Course ratings, instructor reviews, accomplishment badges, planning, tracking, and other tools to help guide students through their HES journey. TheDegreeTracker is proud to bring you this tool to use to track your degree at Harvard Extension School. If you are a student who has more courses than you can keep track of, and you would like to plan out your degree pathway carefully, then track and plan courses with the Degree Tracker to take control of your education. Including course reviews and course ratings, TheDegreeTracker has the potential to not only guide you through your degree, but to let you help other students who might be wondering about the HES courses that you've taken. The Degree Tracker is glad to provide the Harvard Extension School Student Forum (ESF) to help foster a nurturing environment. This forum for was born in 2015 to create better Harvard Extension School friendships, networking, and information to contribute to a better overall HES experience. Extension students formerly congregated at forums such as philfac and extensionstudent. This website has no affiliation with either the philfac or extensionstudent websites. It has been created and run by 100% completely different leadership. For the extension student who wants a bigger taste of what life with other Harvard Extension students is like, combining the Degree Tracker and the extension student forum can foster that sense of community that others have on campus. Another advantage of participating in an online community over the Harvard campus is that extension students can develop permanent relationships with other extension students that being on a physical campus might not necessarily allow, since online students are great at staying in touch online.
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Benefits of attending Harvard Extension School
Grat
Posts: 293
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Like many people I looked at offerings from the ivy league based on reputation. There are plenty of certificate options out there from business schools at many of the ivies but HES won out for several reasons. One of those was affordability, as so many competitors, including HBS, have incredibly expensive, very short programs. I don't doubt that those offer real value to their intended audience, but they weren't a fit for me and didn't make sense financially. The winning factor for HES was that the certificates are designed around actual graduate coursework rather than disconnected certificate courses.
I wanted real graduate classes for several reasons. First, what really counts in an academic career, particularly where accreditors are concerned, is what your transcript shows as earned graduate credit hours. Second, I wanted to be an actual student and have the experience of learning in an ivy league atmosphere to see what that was like. Finally, as a professor I wanted the opportunity to learn more about being a professor from some of the best professors in the world. That last piece is probably what was best for me. The course content was great, but the experience of watching Harvard professors (and others who were good enough to adjunct for HES) work has informed my own professional practice.
As a random side note any affiliation with Harvard is helpful for an academic. I've heard that the value of a Harvard credential, even a certificate, is directly proportional to your distance from Cambridge. In Tennessee there aren't many connections to the ivy league and I noticed very early in my career that any work of any sort with one of them was always included in the bio of speakers, etc. at universities. The certificate gets quite a bit of attention here, which is a nice bonus to the experience.
Finally, and most importantly, I was looking for a program that was self-directed. I'm so happy that the Extension School program is very loose with fluid and customized requirements. For instance, I like how I could still major in, say, history, without having a stringent "sequence" of history courses to take.
It helps that Harvard has a huge name but that wasn't a factor, at all. I just needed mobility, affordability, and a self-paced and fluid curriculum. The HES, then, was the best fit for me.
I really think of HES as the leading pioneer in online education.
I tried online courses in five other institutions, including Oxford's continuing ed school and nothing came as close to creating the sense that you are there in class as HES did, and that only improved over the years with the addition of real-time participation.
So, it is a pretty unbeatable combination. And if that is not enough, you can study with Harvard professors. Is there anything more to be said?
It's a shame, but i think the pendulum will be swinging back, with a number of classes being taught based on last semester's recorded classroom lectures and some that now do not even take place in front of a class at all. It looks like the face of things to come. That's too bad. I think I was here at exactly the right time!
You know how I was feeling at the beginning of javascript last year. I while I stick to my assessment that the first month was too slow, in the end I'm pretty amazed at the breadth we were able to cover. And a secret advantage is that the videos are still there:)
But I do miss synchronous classes where you feel like you're there.
From a business perspective I get the trend. From a pedagogical one, I don't.
I think if I had started out with online graduate study I would have missed out on too many opportunities. When I was younger with less work experience and a view that education was something that just needed to be accomplished, rather than really achieved (if that wording makes sense) I think I would have been likely to just game the system and get points in an online class without really investing in the process. Returning to online courses as an experienced professional I think I'm taking a different approach and looking at what I can take from the opportunity rather than just wanting to pick up enough points to get credit and move forward.
I think that the HES approach to online and blended learning is a good one and, for the bulk of our student population, is an appropriate path to education. Does what we lose in a virtual, asynchronous environment cost more than the benefit of allowing more people to take part? Time will tell.