Opening Statement

Recently, online education has become a popular alternative for a wide range of nontraditional students, and there should be no exception for the MS degree in Medical Physics (MSMP). To be clear, I am not for complete online delivery of the MSMP program because the program contains certain experimental and hands‐on‐based components that require the physical presence of the student, but I am very much for online delivery of the didactic lecture components of the program. In fact, Georgia Tech's MSMP program has been offered to both on‐campus (OC) and DL students for more than a decade. All the didactic lectures are delivered to the DL students via a designated internet site. The admission and degree requirements for DL students are exactly the same as those for OC students. The sequence of courses offered to DL students, however, is designed for part‐time students (who have full‐time jobs) such that they can complete the MS degree in three years. DL students are required to travel to Georgia Tech's campus several times to complete the courses that encompass the experimental and hands‐on‐based components. These courses include radiation detection, radiation therapy physics, and clinical rotation. So far, Georgia Tech's DL program for MSMP has graduated 23 students. The follow‐up record shows that, when compared with the graduates of the OC program, the graduates of the DL program are equally successful in terms of getting employed as junior/resident physicists and becoming ABR certified. We therefore consider the quality of the DL program at Georgia Tech to be the same as that of the OC program. This evaluation is supported by the fact that both the OC and the DL programs at Georgia Tech have received CAMPEP accreditation in 2010.

Online delivery of lectures, however, does require strong technical and administrative support in order to be successful. For example, the lectures must be recorded professionally and uploaded onto the course website in a timely manner, and homework assignments, exams, etc., need to be properly administered and documented. For a large institution this support can usually be provided by the Continuing Education Department (or equivalent), but only if it makes financial sense. A problem, therefore, arises when enrollment is too low to be financially feasible. For Georgia Tech, the minimum enrollment for delivering an online course is three. When enrollment is below three, one must take other options such as the use of recordings from the previous year, which degrades the quality of the program. The low‐enrollment issue, however, is not unique to DL programs. It also applies to OC programs.

In summary, our experience with the DL MSMP program at Georgia Tech has been a positive one. All the didactic lecture components have been delivered successfully online, and the graduates of the program are equally successful in pursuing a career in medical physics when compared with their OC counterparts.