Edelyn Arandia knew she wanted a master’s degree. But she wasn’t sure what type would be best for her career.
The 43-year-old graduate admissions counselor says she did research online and encountered a range of programs, ultimately narrowing her options to a Master of Public Administration and a master’s degree in organizational leadership. Arandia chose the latter, she says, to learn about employee relationships and motivating individuals in the workplace.
“You could be doing business with someone in another country, working on the same project, that kind of thing,” she says. “So you kind of have to take into consideration what people’s cultures are, their personalities.”
Arandia enrolled in an online program through the Florida Institute of Technology. The virtual format, she says, enables her to spend time with her daughters and also continue working full time.
According to the school’s website, the program can be completed in two years if students take one course per term.
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Of organizational leadership, Katrina Merlini, assistant professor and academic program chair for the master’s program at Florida Tech, says, “It’s the study of the science behind leadership. In our particular degree, we like to integrate that science with professional development of leadership skills. It has the goal of really developing students into exceptional organizational or community leaders.”
Prospective online students seeking this type of degree to accelerate their career have plenty of choices at various institutions, including programs at Southern New Hampshire University, Saint Joseph’s University in Philadelphia and Colorado State University–Global Campus. Jobs in business management are projected to rise 8 percent between 2016 and 2026, according to the Bureau of Labor Statistics. The median annual salary for management occupations was $100,790 as of May 2016.
Still, online organizational leadership master’s degrees attract professionals across fields, experts say. And prospective students should expect classmates to have varying amounts of work experience.
Natasha Bowman, adjunct professor at Manhattan College, says students in the school’s online master’s program in organizational leadership range from recent college graduates to those who already hold leadership positions and are looking to gain new skills.
“I have seen them come from every sector — from the public sector, the private sector, across health care, business, finance,” Bowman says.
In the online graduate program at Manhattan College, the curriculum focuses on everything from ethics in the workplace to leadership communication and coaching. Online organizational leadership programs also include a wide variety of coursework, experts say.
Laura Huffstetler, an online master’s student in the program at CSU–Global, says she does reading assignments along with critical-thinking assessments such as research papers.
The 47-year-old Denver resident, an operations analyst at a financial services organization, says in one class she took, students had to identify an organizational problem or opportunity and develop a research proposal on the topic.
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“Each week, we had to complete sections, including coming up with your problem statements, the literature reviews — everything up to actually doing the research for the proposal,” she says.
Arandia says even as a Florida Tech online student, she has access to student services, including the school’s library, which has been particularly helpful for writing research papers. She also takes multiple-choice exams completely online.
As is common in many disciplines, online students in organizational leadership master’s programs are typically required to complete discussion board assignments each week. A professor poses a question for students to answer; students may also need to respond to each other.
In a Foundations of Leadership online course in the master’s program at Florida Tech, students discuss the role of emotional intelligence in different approaches to authentic leadership, Merlini says. They draw on their own experiences working with a supervisor and the pros and cons of his or her leadership style.
Students in these online programs may need to complete projects in teams and communicate through email, phone and videoconferencing. In one class at Florida Tech, Merlini says, students work together to create a change proposal — which typically offers suggestions on ways to address issues within an organization — through video or audio recordings.
“They’ll work toward creating a plan for that change, and ultimately formulating a proposal — a written assignment at the end,” Merlini says.
Dina Samora, program chair for organizational leadership online programs at CSU–Global, says the school likewise encourages the incorporation of video and audio into assignments to help online students hone their oral skills.
Overall, these online programs vary as to whether their courses have synchronous — or live — class session requirements, where students need to virtually attend at a specific time. At Florida Tech, faculty may choose to integrate real-time components into the curriculum, Merlini says, but those are generally optional and recorded.
[Learn how to decide between live and self-paced online courses.]
Whether there’s an on-campus residency or another in-person component will also depend on the institution, experts say. In one CSU–Global online course in organizational leadership, students have the option to complete an internship, for example, but it’s not required, Samora says.
In many cases, online master’s students — who typically live nationally or even globally and often don’t want to leave their full-time jobs — prefer the flexibility of a fully online education.
“I can spend time with my family,” says Arandia, “and still be able to get all my homework done on my own time.”
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Online Organizational Leadership Master’s Programs: What to Expect originally appeared on usnews.com
