Master's Program at Harvard Extension School

[MisterE]

I am seeking feedback into the master's program at Harvard Extension School. I am not looking for community debate about using the Harvard name, open admissions, etc. Instead, I have two specific topic questions and would appreciate any feedback from community users who have taken courses at HES.

 
1. The learning experience with the courses at HES. What is the overall learning experience?

a) Is the learning experience similar to the Big 3, where the student reads the book, reads some articles from the Google Docs document, writes papers, maybe a few quizzes, and weekly discussions? It's mostly a self-taught experience. There are no lectures, no videos discussing each week's topic.
 
b) There are videos (live or recorded) by the professor each week discussing the topic, providing actual lectures, textbook reading, quizzes, writing papers, and weekly discussions. There is genuinely an environment of a professor teaching a class.
 
c) Somewhere between options and A and B.
 
 
 
2. What is the difficulty of the master program courses at HES? I realize the question is broad, and everyone will have their unique definition of difficulty. I am merely trying to gain a consensus on how hard the HES courses compare to other schools and alternative credit providers.

I am finishing up my Master’s degree with HES in less than 30 days at this point.  I can say, like anything, you get what you put into it.  About 50% of my classes had live video participation as a requirement with a portion of the grade attached to participation.  Every class had some sort of lecture (recorded video or live) as part of the course.  Several had group projects that required remote presentations.  Those can be hit or miss depending on who you are grouped with.  I had two courses that resembled the self-study learning experience of the ‘Big 3’ but both of those courses required a significant amount of reading and research with weekly writing assignments in the 7-10 page range (fully referenced).  All in all, it has required anywhere between 15-20 hours a week for me to keep-up with coursework doing 2 courses a semester.  Overall I consider it a great experience and well worth the time and effort.

I hope that helps and I am happy to answer anything regarding the program or my experience with it.