Mark a survey and Inform Staff

Peer Review:
5.45.80.218:valid:Content Nonsensical, Duplicate Survey, High Vulgarity, High Grammatical Error, Probably Admissions, Content Useless, Malicious Intent/Faked, SPAM, :1
5.45.80.218:valid:Content Nonsensical, Duplicate Survey, High Vulgarity, High Grammati

Statistical Analyzer:

I was in Instructional Technology, laboring under the delusion I would come out prepared to be another Ken Burns (although Ken Burns was about 10 years old back then; I would have been the first Ken Burns).

Everything I learned in the department was pretty basic (e.g., programmed instruction, which became the basis for a behaviorist approach to instructional design), but there was no real focus.

The one project where I really learned a great deal was the dissertation. My advisor was not from Instructional Technology; he was a sociologist, and the experience he provided made me wish I had gotten the Ph.D. in sociology and gone on to doing research using the same participant observation research techniques I learned there.

It would mean doing such research from a teaching position at a university. I believe I could have gotten a number of books out of it because I think I could have been happy doing that and would have been good at it.

As it turned out, I got a series of schlub jobs where I contributed little and learned little.

I realize the department is very different now, and instructional technology has taken on a new importance since the advent of the personal computer.

The one caution I would issue anyone going into any graduate program at Syracuse, or elsewhere, is this: do your research first and, no matter how much you think you may love a given major, determine what kind of job you would likely get coming out of that program. If you're paying full tuition at Syracuse and you're majoring in Education, figure out whether it's worth it to spend $70,000 to get that degree, knowing you're going into a field with little or no monetary reward.