Distance Education Network at University of Southern California

The Distance Education Network (DEN) at the University of Southern California allows full-​time professionals to earn a graduate degree completely online.
My choices in the bay area were pretty limited when I was applying to graduate schools. Since I’m a Stanford reject, I decided to pursue another elite engineering school that would allow me to study from home and earn a graduate degree. I pledged allegiance to LA — my home away from home and got accepted into USC and their DEN program.
Courses are videotaped and can be watched live or can be watched at your convenience since they are archived shortly after the class is over. You can either watch the course streaming from your computer or you can also download the video (in a windows format) and watch without having to jump on the internet. I found this quite helpful since pausing and unpausing streaming video will cause a delay to due to buffering.
Based on the professor’s preference, notes are either written on a smartboard (a computerized whiteboard that allows each ‘page’ to be saved as file later on for a student to download) or on a regular pad of paper which gets scanned and uploaded to the course website. The resolution of the notes in pdf format are excellent either smartboard or ‘pad of paper’ way. I usually download all the notes and follow along to the lecture which makes for a better learning experience.
The video will usually show a zoomed in view of the smartboard/​writing pad with a little box in the corner of the screen showing the professor’s face. Pretty much a 1 in 1 screen video shot that you may have on your home TV. This allows the student to take notes efficiently and also watch how the professor conveys their ideas through hand gestures and mannerisms.
Online degrees are becoming more prevalent among Universities, but will never be the best substitution for sitting in class. Being an online student, you don’t get to chit-​chat with the professor between breaks or before/​after class. Your main method of communication with the professor is via email/​phone. Your ability to communicate with other students is also diminished when being an online student.
I’ve had trouble getting in touch with professors and TAs since most communication is done via email. I’ve also had the unfortunate experience of earning a C on a grade, later to find out that my final exam was never picked up from the DEN exams office by the TA. I notified the professor as to why my grade was so low and he informed me that my final was never received. Luckily my exam was found and tracked and I ended up receiving a grade change to an A-​.
Tests can be taken with a corporate proctor. Let’s say I worked for Apple, someone that is registered with USC DEN at apple as a certified proctor can proctor your exam for free. They would then administer the exam on the Apple campus. Once the exam is finished, the proctor would fax or scan in the completed test to the DEN exams office, and your exam will show up graded online in about a week or so. Homeworks can be scanned in by the student and sent via a pdf file straight to DEN also.
I like the way the DEN system works. It allows a lot of flexibility which is what it is intended to do. But there are minor hiccups in this system, that can be alleviated by briefing professors and TAs to be more attentive to DEN students emails and messages. I can’t argue with a world class education however, and I give DEN 4 big red and gold stars. GO SC!!!