Fully Online Bachelor of Science Degree in Physics

At Arizona State University we have developed the first and only fully online Bachelor of Science degree in Physics in the country, with a complete curriculum that matches the on-ground version identically. In the first two years, enrollment in the online program has grown to over 350 students, which is more than twice that of the immersion program. Key components of the curriculum include two semesters of Math Methods and two upper division labs, featuring custom-built simulators that produce signals with the full scope of “imperfections” that comprise real measurements including: noise (Poisson, 1/f, drift); background; hysteresis; resolution and bandwidth limitations; etc. We describe the particular challenges of building the online program, show examples of the Canvas-based assignments and discuss the demographics and performance of the cohort of online students.