Educational Technology (EDTC) Master's Program
The Master of Education in Educational Technology (EDTC) program is based on the assumption that new media and the Internet can have a positive effect on teaching and learning. The EDTC program provides the master’s degree candidate with both a theoretical and a practical grounding in educational technology methods and techniques, emphasizing theories of teaching and learning that support these methods. To demonstrate mastery of the program’s goals, all candidates complete the same series of seven program assessments. Depending on the candidate’s career path, these assessments are evaluated by rubrics developed according to standards of the International Society for Technology in Education (ISTE) or the Association for Educational Communications and Technology (AECT). Candidates who hold a basic teaching license follow the ISTE standards, which are assessed via rubrics through which K-12 teachers exhibit the knowledge, skills, and dispositions needed to teach technology applications, support student learning, and prepare other teachers to use technology effectively across the curriculum. Candidates from higher education, government, and industry are assessed via rubrics based on the five AECT standards involving content knowledge, pedagogy, learning environments, professional skills, and research.
Background
In 1998, the University of Delaware created an educational technology specialization within the Master of Education program in Curriculum and Instruction. Since its inception, the educational technology specialization has been a popular program that is growing in importance as all levels of education, especially K-12 schools, work to integrate technology across the curriculum.
In 2005, the University of Delaware elevated the educational technology specialization to the status of an M.Ed. concentration, not only to recognize the increasingly strategic importance of this field in our society, but also to respond to the students’ most frequent request related to this program, which is to have the title “Educational Technology” appear on their transcripts as evidence that the candidates completed a degree program in educational technology.
In 2015, the Faculty Senate approved a program revision that aligns the EDTC program with new educational technology standards issued by both ISTE and AECT.
National Educational Technology Standards
Both the ISTE and AECT standards are informed by a knowledge base of books and articles from the scholarly literature on educational technology. This theoretical grounding in scholarship fits the School of Education’s view of its faculty and students as reflective practitioners who learn from the experience of others in developing their own reflective practice. Appropriate readings from the ISTE and AECT knowledge bases are assigned and interwoven throughout the various courses in the EDTC program. Follow these links to see the standards:
Facilities
The University of Delaware provides an excellent base of library and instructional media services in support of the EDTC program. As first-place winner of the national EDUCAUSE award for campus networking, UD offers EDTC students one of the nation’s finest technological infrastructures. All classrooms are wired for high-speed Internet access and are equipped for multimedia computer projection. Wireless hotspots cover the campus, and state-of-the-art computer labs make computer access ubiquitous. The award-winning Morris Library houses one of the country’s richest print and electronic research collections enhanced by a state-of-the-art multimedia production facility to which all EDTC students have access. The University of Delaware houses computer labs that are freely available to students in the EDTC program. An increasing number of EDTC students, however, are acquiring laptops and tablets to use in lieu of computers in the campus labs. Students with mobile devices appreciate the UD network registration infrastructure, which enables each device's MAC address to be registered for use on campus with the same level of network access as computers in the labs.
Online and In-Person Options
The EDTC master’s program has two formats: online or face-to-face. In both formats, candidates pay the same graduate tuition rate. In 2022-23, this rate is $773 per credit.
Face-to-face classes meet weekly in a physical classroom space on the University of Delaware’s main campus in Newark, Delaware. Classroom attendance is required for students enrolled in the face-to-face program.
Online classes take place on the Web. Most of the courses are asynchronous, which means that there are no scheduled times when students must meet together online. A few of the courses, however, have occasional synchronous meeting times when all of the students log on to UD’s videoconferencing network. These weekly Web meetings happen in the evenings, typically on Tuesday, Thursday, or Friday. Specific dates are listed each term in the schedule of courses.
