An Online Doctorate For Researching Professionals

The interest and demand for online terminal degrees across disciplines by professionals wishing to conduct research and fulfill doctoral degree requirements at a distance is only increasing. But what these programs look like, how they are implemented, and how they might be evaluated are the questions that challenge administrators and pedagogues alike. This book presents a model for a doctoral program that bridges theory, research, and practice and is offered completely or largely online. In their described program model, Kumar and Dawson enable researching professionals to build an online community of inquiry, engage in critical discourse within and across disciplines, learn from and with experts and peers, and generate new knowledge. Their program design is grounded in the theoretical and research foundations of online, adult, and doctoral education, curriculum design and community-building, implementation, and evaluation. The authors, who draw on their experience of implementing a similar program at the University of Florida, not only share data collected from students and faculty members but also reflect on lessons learned working on the program in diverse educational contexts. An important guide for program leaders who wish to develop, implement, and sustain an online professional doctorate, An Online Doctorate for Researching Professionals will also be a valuable resource for higher education professionals seeking to include e-learning components in existing on-campus doctoral programs.

The path for doctoral students is laden with obstacles and challenges that can cause students to stumble if they are not prepared for what their future holds. In order to avoid the uncertainty, anxiety, and stress that can consume doctoral students, a comprehensive guide is needed that provides the best practices and strategies to support them in their professional journeys. The Research Anthology on Doctoral Student Professional Development considers the difficulties associated with being a doctoral student such as mental health issues and provides different avenues for success such as mentorship and group study. The text seeks to provide a thorough investigation into what it means to be a doctoral student in order to best prepare potential and current students for what to expect. Moreover, it discusses best practices for developing dissertations. Covering a range of topics such as anxiety, research methods, and dissertations, this major reference work is ideal for researchers, academicians, scholars, practitioners, instructors, and students.

The purpose and impact of the professional doctorate – or EdD (Doctor of Education) – has long been debated. What should it be? Who should do it? Why is it worth doing? How should it be taught? What makes the EdD distinctive, unique and worthwhile? Internationally, at the level of program development and provision, universities are increasing the range of transformative professional doctorate practices while recruiting larger numbers of students from a wider range of professions. Transformative Doctoral Research Practices for Professionals offers unique insight into the teaching, learning, thinking and doing of doctoral education. In the form of a collaboratively authored volume this book offers the first institutional-specific collection that focuses on doctoral research practices. It showcases: the practices of researching professionals at different phases and stages of a five year doctoral journey; the imperative of reflexivity as one moves from practitioner to researching professional and scholar; and the placing of ‘practice’ at the centre of a doctoral program specifically designed for professionals. This book shares the lived-through debates, deliberations, challenges and experiences of a group of professional (practitioner) doctoral students, their supervisors and lecturers. The critical perspectives and examples explored offer a wealth of insights on the distinct practices and unique journeying of professional practitioners embarking on professional doctorates. This volume invites you to reflect on and enter into dialogue with your peers and professional learning and research communities about the distinctiveness of the professional doctorate. /div

Online Distance Education: Towards a Research Agenda offers a systematic overview of the major issues, trends, and areas of priority in online distance education research. In each chapter, an international expert or team of experts provides an overview of one timely issue in online distance education, summarizing major research on the topic, discussing theoretical insights that guide the research, posing questions and directions for future research, and discussing the implications for distance education practice as a whole. Intended as a primary reference and guide for distance educators, researchers, and policymakers, Online Distance Education addresses aspects of distance education practice that have often been marginalized, including issues of cost and economics, concerns surrounding social justice, cultural bias, the need for faculty professional development, and the management and growth of learner communities. At once soundly empirical and thoughtfully reflective, yet also forward-looking and open to new approaches to online and distance teaching, this text is a solid resource for researchers in a rapidly expanding discipline.

Information communication technologies (ICT) have long been important in supporting doctoral study. Though ICTs have been integrated into educational practices at all levels, there is little understanding of how effective these technologies are in supporting resource development for students and researchers in academic institutions. Enhancing the Role of ICT in Doctoral Research Processes is a collection of innovative research that identifies the ways that doctoral supervisors and students perceive the role of ICTs within the doctoral research process and supports the development of guidelines to enhance ICT skills within these programs. While highlighting topics including professional development, online learning, and ICT management, this book is ideally designed for academicians, researchers, and professionals seeking current research on ICT use for doctoral research.

The number of practice-based or practice-led doctorate programs continues to grow across the U.S. Doctoral students who seek a terminal practitioner doctorate typically conduct practice-based research within the dissertation research used as the culmination of the degree program. These terminally degreed graduates return to educational practice to improve practice, impact innovation, and solve the complex problems of practice through research-based decision making. Practice-Based and Practice-Led Research for Dissertation Development provides the most current research, innovation, and insights into practice-based research conducted within U.S. practitioner doctorate programs across fields that include management, education, computer science, health sciences, and social and behavioral sciences. The book illustrates the latest uses of practitioner research and highlights current findings for the dissemination and use of practice-based and practice-led research within these settings. Covering topics that include self-inquiry methods, action research, and high-impact writing support, this book is an ideal reference source for doctoral scholars, doctoral research supervisors, faculty, program deans, higher education leadership, and doctorate program developers.

Teaching Health Professionals Online: Frameworks and Strategies is a must-read for professionals in the health care field who strive to deliver excellence in their online classes. This compendium of teaching strategies will assist both new and experienced instructors in the health professions. In addition to outlining creative, challenging activities with step-by-step directions and explanations of why they work, each chapter situates these practical techniques within the context of a particular theory of learning: instructional immediacy, invitational theory, constructivism, connectivism, transformative learning, and quantum learning theory. The authors also address other issues familiar to those who have taught online courses. How can a distance instructor build teacher-student relationships? How does one create a sense of community in the virtual classroom? How can an online instructor best support students in their future pursuit of knowledge and their development as competent professionals? By considering these and other concerns, this handbook aims to help instructors to increase student success and satisfaction, which, the authors hope, will in the long run contribute to improved patient care.

Providing a comprehensive examination of the nature of online higher education, this book proposes effective ways in which it can be conceptualised and designed to be more accessible and authentic for adult learners. Against the backdrop of differing historical origins, which have resulted in multiple, misaligned understandings, applications and interpretations of online and distance education, this book presents an empirical research study which uses a narrative approach to explore the lived experiences of online postgraduate students. It positions two arguments on the (in-)accessibility and (in-)authenticity of online education side by side, effectively demonstrating how they can be conflict and contradict each other. Using narrative data, the authors re-examine the concepts of distance and interaction in order to present a new understanding of the concept of openness relevant to the for-profit postgraduate distance learning sector. This book illuminates the postgraduate distance education experience and presents a set of alternative theoretically informed conceptions which the authors present as three essential pillars of online postgraduate education: openness, distance, and interaction. Carefully presented and supported using real online higher education scenarios, the book will enable higher educators, practising online education in a range of pedagogical contexts, to re-imagine their practices; further, to create more accessible and authentic learning opportunities for their learners.