2024 ASEE Annual Conference & Exposition

Online graduate degree program offerings, particularly at the master’s level, have increased tremendously over recent years. In all disciplines, the online option provides an additional opportunity to students who wish to pursue graduate education. These programs are effective and viable for many students, but others strongly prefer or learn best from in-person education. In this paper, differences in preference and experiences with online and in-person master’s programs will be examined for two groups of students, returners and direct-pathway students. We define returners as those who work in industry for at least five years between their undergraduate degree conferral and matriculation into a graduate program, while direct pathway students have less than five years’ gap between their undergraduate and graduate degree programs. Previous work has shown that the two groups exhibit a variety of differences, although they are also similar in many ways. This paper will discuss returners’ observed preference for online programs, and what rationales led students to choose the type of course delivery they did. Experiences in these programs will be explored and discussed, with analyses covering both qualitative and quantitative data that has been collected.