Chapter 15: Distance Education in Beam Physics

This chapter summarizes the main features of the Michigan State University M.Sc. and Ph.D. online degree programs in Beam Physics. Internet-based Beam Physics courses were first offered in the spring semester of 1997. Since then, Web-courses offerings have been extended from the introductory graduate level Beam Physics to more advanced Beam Physics courses to a total of now three online courses plus various reading courses. The Master of Science program was launched in 1998, and the doctoral online program followed a year later. The programs are part of Michigan State University’s Virtual University, and are featured in Peterson’s Guide as the only online physics degree programs in the United States. In this paper, we will emphasize the growth of the program and lessons learned, and we will support our conclusions with statistical data. One of the major accomplishments is the development of the WebCOSY system, an interactive Web-based homework and course management program. Besides supporting problems written within the system, it has the unique feature of also supporting processing and grading of students’ submissions by arbitrary external programs, and hence provides rather far-reaching flexibility for the assignment of homework problems. The system supports and manages databases for classes, students, scores, graders, as well as homework problems for re-use in other classes. Written entirely in Perl, the system is easily manageable and portable.