Reference letter

[Duneranger]

As someone who was Pre-med for a while, letters of recommendations are one of the things I read up on a lot as an online student. When you get a course you feel you can excel in, make sure you take your time and be as helpful to everyone else in class as possible. If your discussion requirements state that you should have 4 weekly interactions, try to do 6 or 7 every week. Chat back and forth with your instructor often. Ask them if there are any bonus assignments you can work on. By going above and beyond, and being in touch with your instructor often, they will learn more about you and your work style.

A lot of the times profs will have you draft the letter for them as well, especially if they dont know you super well

I've never been asked to write the letter myself. Pretty much defeats the purpose of it. 

At UMPI, you don't have weekly interactions. There's rarely any interaction outside of the responses to the Milestones and Final Assessment. Even then, some of the responses are "Submit as is" and "Affirmed". At UMPI, the more classes you have with a professor, the better it is if you want a letter of recommendation.

I agree to a point, but when I was applying for grad programs (post grad fellowships, medicine and history), nearly every person wanted a draft. These were all PhDs and MDs.

Personally I think LORs are archaic and pointless but it is what it is.

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As someone who was Pre-med for a while, letters of recommendations are one of the things I read up on a lot as an online student. When you get a course you feel you can excel in, make sure you take your time and be as helpful to everyone else in class as possible. If your discussion requirements state that you should have 4 weekly interactions, try to do 6 or 7 every week. Chat back and forth with your instructor often. Ask them if there are any bonus assignments you can work on. By going above and beyond, and being in touch with your instructor often, they will learn more about you and your work style.

Also, do not ask the first week. Make sure they have had a few weeks of working with you before you broach the subject with them. You want them to be able to talk about your work ethics and what you are like as a student. That is much better than them writing a letter than just states "this person attended my classes and got an A". There needs to be some substance to the letter. Also, if you happen to have any classes being taught by high ranking school officials, those are good options to focus on. For my Pre-med letters of recommendations, I had the Dean of Mathematics and the Dean of Global Studies write my 2 academic recommendations.

A lot of the times profs will have you draft the letter for them as well, especially if they dont know you super well

This is also important because every letter that I have requested, was also met with a response of "Do you have a draft available of what you were looking for?"

These generalities do not seem very applicable to YourPace UMPI. Interaction with classmates, discussions, or being in touch with instructors is not really the norm (at least in the program I am in). Which to some is a major (if not the most important) reason to choose UMPI as their school. Yes, there will be those people who may claim to have had such an amazing interaction with the instructors, almost a buddy-like relations and so on. Yet, whether they speak the truth at all or at least slightly exaggerating (likely due to the very positive outcome - successful graduation) is for everyone to decide for himself/herself. 

Requesting a letter of recommendation should not be made to seem like one is begging the instructor for one. Yes, we do have to take into account that this is CBE. Yet we do put enough effort (which can somewhat be gauged by our grades) to feel comfortable enough to request that letter of recommendation. This all is, however, only my opinion. This is how I see it - if you have had 3 (again - my opinion) classes with an instructor and you had no issues (frequent need to be assisted by the instructor) with milestones, final assessments, or due dates (or doing everything at the very end of the term), I believe you have all the right to request a letter of recommendation. How the instructors are going to judge whether they should respond positively to your request is up to them. But no diligent student should be asking himself/herself a question like "Did I deserve to request a letter of recommendation?".

I think given the limited interactions in CBE environments it would make even more sense to draft a letter for them. They likely don't know you well as a person nor your reasons for pursuing X school. Likely they wouldn't say no but if I was in their shoes I wouldn't definitely want some assistance.

[Chankosumo]

I strongly disagree with what you are implying.

Just like us CBE students, instructors too can (and do) adapt to the CBE way. Why would anyone suggest that they do not have the means or knowledge about how to form an opinion on us students based on our CBE experience?
What does "know you as a person" mean? Is a request for a letter of a recommendation a marriage proposal? Do they need to know my diet? Or, do they need to know if I like dogs or not? Or, perhaps they need to know whether I like chocolate or vanilla? What kind of questions will satisfy the (of course supposed) requirement of "knowing you as a person"? Do they actually need to "know me as a person"? And why if you were in their shoes would need to?
CBE or not, we are still students, and they - instructors. They have access to our work (milestones and final assessments); they know when we send our assignments; they can see who and when "goes to school" (I mean who and when is logging on the learning platform); they have our school email addresses in case there is a need for communication. A letter of recommendation is an evaluation/opinion about a student's qualities as a student, not as a person. Now, of course you may say "none of this is what I am implying", but just because you may say so does not necessairly mean it isn't.

[Duneranger]

I strongly disagree with what you are implying.

Just like us CBE students, instructors too can (and do) adapt to the CBE way. Why would anyone suggest that they do not have the means or knowledge about how to form an opinion on us students based on our CBE experience?
What does "know you as a person" mean? Is a request for a letter of a recommendation a marriage proposal? Do they need to know my diet? Or, do they need to know if I like dogs or not? Or, perhaps they need to know whether I like chocolate or vanilla? What kind of questions will satisfy the (of course supposed) requirement of "knowing you as a person"? Do they actually need to "know me as a person"? And why if you were in their shoes would need to?
CBE or not, we are still students, and they - instructors. They have access to our work (milestones and final assessments); they know when we send our assignments; they can see who and when "goes to school" (I mean who and when is logging on the learning platform); they have our school email addresses in case there is a need for communication. A letter of recommendation is an evaluation/opinion about a student's qualities as a student, not as a person. Now, of course you may say "none of this is what I am implying", but just because you may say so does not necessairly mean it isn't.

Interesting response. 

I don't know your experience with applying to fellowships, post-doc roles or grad school, but letters purely based on a student writing good papers, doing quality powerpoints or scoring well on tests aren't always going to cut it. At least not in my line of work. These academic accolades are already expected of all the applicants (and reflected in one's GPA)  and partially why I feel some aspects of LORs are archaic (the check the box types). That doesn't mean they don't have some sort of role in academia though.

CBE education is pretty low prof/student interaction (Kinda the point right? Do the work as quick as possible then move on). We don't really know how much they think or reflect on our individual works (or how much they separate us as individual students besides name recognition on an assignment). It's impossible to quantify this. I have had to review applications with LORs and the boilerplate ones about a students assignments don't stand out as much as those that comment on academic ability as well as some personal investment into who the person is. These are critical attributes for the military, medicine, certain business leadership programs and other academic fields.

I don't really understand your last sentence and it seems sort of unnecessary.

[GameSlinger]

I don't know your experience with applying to fellowships, post-doc roles or grad school, but letters purely based on a student writing good papers, doing quality powerpoints or scoring well on tests aren't always going to cut it. At least not in my line of work. These academic accolades are already expected of all the applicants (and reflected in one's GPA)  and partially why I feel some aspects of LORs are archaic (the check the box types). That doesn't mean they don't have some sort of role in academia though.

This is pretty much what I was referring to. There is a big difference between a LOR that says "this person completed all the assigned tasks and scored 92% in to class", and one that talks about how good their interpersonal skills are dealing with students and instructors, that when they wanted to go volunteer at a non-profit they were asking for permission to adjust assignment dates in advance, and that they always went above and beyond with their assignments. These types of LOR are the ones the competitive application reviewers are looking for. If they were only wanting the first example, that is pretty much covered by the school transcript.

An A+ student doesn't mean they will be able to deal with people in real life. This is why Med Schools are always looking for volunteer hours, job shadowing history, extra curricular activities, etc. They want to make sure the people the are admitting are well rounded and therefore be more likely to be successful in the real world, not just in school.

[Chankosumo]

Generalizing, yet again. Still. This information is of no utility whatsoever, both of you. In my first post I did (so did a former UMPI student) explain to you that interactions with other students, weekly discussions, or chatting with instructors are not a thing in UMPI's YourPace programs. Yet here we are, talking about volunteer hours or extra curricular. No. These, still, are not a thing in UMPI's YourPace. Both of you mention experience - great! Let us indeed talk of experience, UMPI experience. Should you need a reminder, the question posed in this thread concerns the possibility of requesting a letter of recommendation as an UMPI student (or graduate). The things you are mentioning here may (or may not; I have no opinion on that) be completely correct for another school where you can (and perhaps must) engage in the mentioned extra activities. But this is not the UMPI YourPace reality. What if a prospective UMPI student is reading these generalizations which have nothing to do with this school? Or a more naïve current student? You are telling people that they should better do things that are actually impossible to do as UMPI students.

In my first post I already shared my opinion on the letter of recommendation. What I am going to reiterate is that in your UMPI YourPace class, the instructor already knows what CBE is (naturally, being a CBE instructor). Just because for whatever reason you have decided to be a CBE student does not mean that you have no right to request a letter of recommendation. As we already saw an example in this thread, requesting and receiving one is a possibility, in fact. Even as CBE students, I believe many of us put serious effort regarding our studies. Do not let anyone, whether they do it willingly or not, make you feel that your CBE experience is meaningless. As for some of us this kind of education is the only way.

[Duneranger]

Generalizing, yet again. Still. This information is of no utility whatsoever, both of you. In my first post I did (so did a former UMPI student) explain to you that interactions with other students, weekly discussions, or chatting with instructors are not a thing in UMPI's YourPace programs. Yet here we are, talking about volunteer hours or extra curricular. No. These, still, are not a thing in UMPI's YourPace. Both of you mention experience - great! Let us indeed talk of experience, UMPI experience. Should you need a reminder, the question posed in this thread concerns the possibility of requesting a letter of recommendation as an UMPI student (or graduate). The things you are mentioning here may (or may not; I have no opinion on that) be completely correct for another school where you can (and perhaps must) engage in the mentioned extra activities. But this is not the UMPI YourPace reality. What if a prospective UMPI student is reading these generalizations which have nothing to do with this school? Or a more naïve current student? You are telling people that they should better do things that are actually impossible to do as UMPI students.

In my first post I already shared my opinion on the letter of recommendation. What I am going to reiterate is that in your UMPI YourPace class, the instructor already knows what CBE is (naturally, being a CBE instructor). Just because for whatever reason you have decided to be a CBE student does not mean that you have no right to request a letter of recommendation. As we already saw an example in this thread, requesting and receiving one is a possibility, in fact. Even as CBE students, I believe many of us put serious effort regarding our studies. Do not let anyone, whether they do it willingly or not, make you feel that your CBE experience is meaningless. As for some of us this kind of education is the only way.

You are being oddly defensive about this and taking things personally for some strange reason. You are inferring, projecting and stating multiple things that I did NOT say. I had to reread the posts because your post honestly baffled me and is sort of bizarre. None of my comments are a knock on CBE or UMPI (Why else would I be here? Also this isn't my first rodeo with online schooling). I am just commenting LORs are fortunately or unfortunately are staples in academia. For those wanting to pursue certain avenues of employment/further education, those LORs are going to need to talk about content beyond a few essays, powerpoints, discussion posts or papers. This isn't up for debate, it's reality (regardless of how yourpace is set up).

My original comment, which I have no idea at this point if you are even referring to, was just mentioning that some profs might ask or expect a draft of a LOR. That's it. It's not uncommon or rare to have that happen at ANY university. This could potentially make up for the lack of personal interaction and give the profs something to work off of versus generic comments about a handful of papers or PowerPoint.

Chill, it's not that serious.

[ss20ts]

The OP is applying for an MSc and is completing a business degree at UMPI. No idea why this has veered off into a discussion about med school which has no bearing on this.

[Duneranger]

The OP is applying for an MSc and is completing a business degree at UMPI. No idea why this has veered off into a discussion about med school which has no bearing on this.

I think it was just an example