An Analysis Of Professional Practice Ed.D. Dissertations In Educational Technology

Professional practice Ed.D. dissertations in Educational Technology
1
Submitted Manuscript:
Dawson, K. & Kumar, S. (2014). An analysis of professional practice Ed.D.
dissertations in Educational Technology. TechTrends. 58(4), 62‐72.
An analysis of professional practice Ed.D. dissertations in Educational Technology
The online Ed.D. in Educational Technology at the University of Florida is a professional
practice doctorate program (Shulman, 2006) designed to prepare practitioner-scholars
who have foundational knowledge in Educational Technology, deep knowledge in areas
of specialization relevant to their professional contexts and the ability to solve contextual
problems by conducting research in practice. Students in our Ed.D. program in
Educational Technology complete two years of required online coursework as a cohort
and take their qualifying exams at the end of the two years. Once students successfully
pass qualifying exams, they begin work on their dissertations. Please see Dawson et al.
(2011) and Kumar et al. (2011) for detailed descriptions of the program.
Since the program’s inception in 2008, 23 online Ed.D. professional practice students
from our program have completed their dissertations. The purpose of this article is to
share what these dissertations have looked like and to begin a dialogue about professional
practice dissertations completed in online Educational Technology programs.
Specifically, we (1) provide an overview of different ways professional practice Ed.D.
dissertations are structured, (2) share guiding principles for professional practice
dissertations in our Ed.D. program, (3) analyze the ways in which these guiding
principles played out in the dissertations and (4) discuss the implications of our analysis
for our program and for other online professional practice programs in Educational
Technology.
Professional Practice Ed.D. Dissertation Structures
Professional practice Ed.D. dissertations (also known as Dissertations in Practice or
Capstone Experiences) typically include a focus on applied scholarship around a local
problem of practice. This problem of practice is contextualized within theoretical and
research literature and systematic inquiry is conducted to develop solutions that can
inform decision making and guide local practice (Willis et. al., 2010; Shulman et. al.,
2006). The majority of professional practice doctoral programs in Education are found in
Educational Leadership programs where the dissertation takes many forms 1
. Professional
practice dissertations might:
• resemble traditional dissertations (Auerbach, 2011)
• emphasize a particular stance toward inquiry such as social justice (ProDEL, 2012)
• promote particular research genres such as program evaluation or policy analysis
(Illinois State, XXXX?)
1 Much of the information for this section comes from documents available from the Carnegie Project on the
Education. While we have used the most current information available on this site, dissertation structures tend
to evolve other time.
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• promote a particular method such as action research or practitioner inquiry (Wetzel &
Ewbanks, 2013)
• involve completing pieces of the dissertation throughout a program (ProDEL, 2012)
• encompass a team activity with students making individual and collaborative
contributions a final document (KCTCS EdD Program Dissertations, online)
• revolve around a common theme explored by most students (Marsh & Dembo, 2009)
• involve a team-based evaluation conducted for actual clients (VCU DIP, online)
Quite frankly, the diversity of ways in which professional practice dissertations might be
conducted was somewhat overwhelming to us during our program planning stage.
Combine this diversity with the fact that there were few examples of online professional
practice doctoral degrees in Educational Technology (see, for example, Boise State
University) and no other examples of completed professional practice dissertations at
traditional brick-and-mortar research institutions when we began our program in 2008.
We were really working in somewhat unchartered territory.
We knew that many of the Educational Leadership formats would not work for us
because Educational Technology tends to attract a more diverse student population. For
example, we have students working in K-12 education, higher education, virtual schools,
not-for-profits, business, industry and the military. Thus, it did not make sense to
conceptualize the professional practice dissertation as revolving around a particular
theme, method or genre. A team-based approach also would not have worked because of
these unique environments and the fact that a main goal of our program is to help
students facilitate change in their local contexts.
However, we did realize based on our experiences working with online M.Ed. students on
culminating projects that having clarity on the expected product is even more important
for distance students than for on-campus students. Thus, we developed guiding principles
with the goal of articulating expectations while leaving room for students to conduct
dissertations relevant to them and their professional practice.
Guiding Principles of UF Ed.D. Dissertations in Educational Technology
We conceptualize the UF Ed.D. professional practice dissertation in Educational
Technology as a scholarly document that demonstrates a student’s ability to conduct
research on a problem within her local context. The problem should relate to Educational
Technology or involve Educational Technology as part of a potential solution. The
problem should be described in terms of the professional practice, framed using relevant
literature and addressed using relevant methods applicable to the situation. The
dissertation should result in clear implications for professional practice and personal
implications for the student. Based on this general vision for professional practice
dissertations, we used the following principles to guide students and mentors during the
dissertation process.
Guiding Principle #1: The dissertation is embedded in the student’s professional practice
or context.
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Guiding Principle #2: The dissertation addresses a problem in the student’s professional
practice and is related to the field of Educational Technology.
Guiding Principle #3: The problem is framed using relevant literature.
Guiding Principle #4: The problem is addressed using relevant methods.
Guiding Principle #5: The dissertation discusses implications for professional practice.
Analysis Methods
Our first cohort of students was admitted in 2008 and we are currently in the process of
admitting our fourth cohort (we admit cohorts every other year). Since 2011, 23 students
have graduated from our professional practice doctoral program in Educational
Technology (14 from Cohort 1 and 9 from Cohort 2). The purpose of this article was to
analyze dissertations completed by these students in terms of how the guiding principles
presented above were actualized. We analyzed the 23 dissertations based on the
following question:
In what ways were the five guiding principles actualized in the first 23 dissertations
completed in our online professional practice doctoral program in Educational
Technology?
At least one of us served on each of the 23 dissertations used in the analysis and our close
involvement with them opens the opportunity for bias in our analysis. We also developed
the guiding principles which further opens opportunities for bias. However, our proximity
to the dissertations and the guiding principles also put us in a good position to determine
how the guiding principles were actualized. While we openly acknowledge potential
biases, we took steps to minimize them.
First, we began our analysis by independently reading and analyzing three dissertations
that neither of us chaired. Our rationale here is that the dissertation chair tends to know
the document better than anyone else on the committee and looking at dissertations
neither of us chaired allowed us to be on the same level in terms of reading and analyzing
the documents. We created a Google spreadsheet that included a dissertation title in each
row and six columns; one for each guiding principle and one for general notes and
comments. After we each analyzed these three dissertations, we discussed our analysis to
make sure we were interpreting the actualization of guiding principles in a similar
manner.
We then independently analyzed the remaining dissertations and met again to discuss our
analysis. After we completed our analysis, we sent it to our program area colleagues to
review; asking them to pay particular attention to our analysis of the dissertations they
chaired. Our program area colleagues confirmed our interpretations of how the guiding
principles were actualized. In the following sections we share our analysis of as well as
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our insights about how each Guiding Principle played out in the first group of
dissertations in our program.
The First UF Online Ed.D. Dissertations in Educational Technology
Overview of UF Ed.D. Dissertations in Educational Technology
Twenty-three dissertations have been completed in our program since 2011. The
following table provides an overview of five of these dissertations. The table includes the
context in which each dissertation was situated, each student’s professional position at
the time of the dissertation, the problem of practice addressed, literature used for the
conceptual framework, research questions and methodological approaches. A table
summarizing all 23 dissertations is available on our program website: XXXXX. The next
sections present our analysis of the dissertations based on our guiding principles.
We realize that some readers will attempt to judge the quality of these dissertations from
the snippets of information we provide in the next sections but we believe that a
dissertation’s quality can only be judged when looking at the complete document. Our
goal in this paper is not to promote the quality of dissertations completed in our program
(although we are proud of what our students have produced). Instead, our goal is to
describe how the guiding principles we developed for the dissertation actualized.
[Insert Table 1 about here]
or context.
Embedded Nature
The dissertations fell into three categories in terms of their embedded nature: Directly
Embedded, Indirectly Embedded and Not Embedded.
Directly Embedded Professional Practice Dissertations. This category refers to
dissertations conducted directly in a student’s personal professional practice. That is,
students studied something that was a natural part of their practice. Nearly half of the
dissertations (12) fell into this category. For example, a district-level professional
development specialist designed, implemented and evaluated professional development
opportunities related to using technologies recently purchased by the district while a
university librarian studied her embedded librarian experience in an online course within
her unit.
Indirectly Embedded Professional Practice Dissertations. In this category dissertations
were also conducted in a student’s professional practice and aimed at improving the
professional practice context, but what was studied was not a natural part of their
practice. For example, a school-wide technology director studied how preschool students
in her school used digital scaffolds in order to make recommendations about iPad
implementation and an international center director designed blended learning modules
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on intercultural competence for an undergraduate course offered by her center to learn
how to support faculty in such endeavors. Six (6) dissertations fell in this category.
The distinction between Directly and Indirectly Embedded Professional Practice
Dissertations is associated with whether the dissertation is a natural part of the
professional practice. For example, an online learning coordinator for a start-up public
health organization was charged with determining the value of starting a social media
presence for the organization. He transformed this part of his practice into a dissertation
by interviewing the main decision makers and developing an action plan for the
organization based on what he learned. We categorized this dissertation as Directly
Embedded. On the other hand, we categorized a dissertation completed by an advising
specialist at a community college as Indirectly Embedded because she interviewed others
in similar positions at other institutions as to how they used technology to support quality
academic advising. While this is related to improving her professional practice, the study
was not a natural part of what she would typically do in her practice.
Not Embedded Professional Practice Dissertations. Five (5) dissertations fell into this
category, which means their topics of study were not embedded in their professional
practice. For example, a professional development executive in a for-profit company
studied how one of the company’s products was used but not for the purpose of
informing his company or improving his work. In another situation, a community college
faculty member studied barriers to using games and simulations in teaching but did not
focus on her own context or on the community college context.
Contexts for Professional Practice Dissertations
The contexts in which these dissertations were conducted were split between post-
secondary environments (8) and K-12 environments (13). Post-secondary contexts
included community colleges, undergraduate and graduate environments while the K-12
environments included public and private institutions and virtual schools. Two
dissertations did not fit either context. One dissertation occurred across both post-
secondary and K-12 contexts and one dissertation occurred within a social networking
group. After we categorized the contexts, we looked at the degree of embeddedness
occurring in each (See Table 2).
[Insert Table 2 about here]
Guiding Principle #1: Insights. In general, students whose professional context was most
closely related to practitioner work (i.e. teachers, professional development specialist,
etc.) tended to complete Directly Embedded dissertations. These students seemed to have
the easiest time conceptualizing a personally relevant problem of practice and a potential
solution to address it. For example, a sixth grade social studies teacher examined a unit
involving digital biographies while an instructor from a small college studied one of her
courses.
Students whose professional context most closely related to leadership (i.e. district
technology specialist, administrator, center director, etc.) tended to complete Indirectly
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Embedded dissertations. In some cases, their problems of practice were best resolved by
learning from contexts very similar to their own rather than conducting research in their
own practice. For example, we have previously mentioned the student who studied how
other advisors use technology. It would not have been possible for her to do this in her
own context because other advisors were not available to study. In other cases, their
problems of practice related to a small part of their responsibilities. For example, an
assistant superintendent studied a district-wide Digital Backpack program and a nursing
professor studied faculty perceptions of ethical behavior in her college.
Students who worked in for-profit settings completed the majority of unembedded
dissertations. In some cases these students were explicitly denied permission to study
within their own practice; often because of confidentiality issues. Not all students
completing unembedded dissertations worked in for-profit settings but these students also
faced similar struggles of identifying a problem of practice and/or gaining support for
research within their context. Other factors also came into play when identifying
problems of practice. For example, we had students change jobs in the middle of the
program, decide they want to leave their professional practice and, thus, lack motivation
to study within it and face leadership and/or visionary changes within their professional
practice during the program. Wetzel and Ewbanks (2013) discuss similar challenges in
their program.
We realize issues may arise from students studying within their own practice but we think
the benefits for improving and transforming local practices outweigh the potential issues.
We mentor students to recognize and address these potential issues. First, as part of a
campus-based session we have a representative from our College’s Office of Educational
Research speak to the cohorts about the ethics of research. During this time students are
able to ask questions about their specific situations and receive feedback from faculty and
peers. Second, the Institutional Review Board (IRB) protocol must be approved by
individuals in the local context as well as by the university. For practitioners such as
teachers this means by the school principal or by the unit department chair. For those in
administrative positions this means a person in a supervisory role. For example, a
technology director might get the study approved by the principal while an assistant
superintendent might get the study approved by the superintendent. Third, the informed
consent (and/or assent) forms included in the IRB ensure participants are aware of the
benefits and risks associated with participation. The IRB also discusses confidentiality or
anonymity and makes it clear that participation is voluntarily. Fourth, the students must
justify the relevance and importance of studying the problem of practice. It must be a
problem that is worthy of asking for participation. Finally, we do not support studies with
high stakes consequences for the participants (i.e. promotion, merit raises, grades).
While our IRB office would likely not support these either, we aim to focus our students
on improving or transforming their local contexts with what they learn from their study.
It is unlikely that high stakes consequences will accomplish this goal because effective
change is almost always a process.
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practice and is related to the field of Educational Technology.
The majority of the 23 dissertations fell into one of two categories: (1) Teaching,
professional development or support for technology use or (2) Using technology to
support teaching and learning. The problems of practice in the first category related to a
need to prepare groups of individuals in the doctoral students’ professional practice
(virtual school parents, preservice teachers, K-12 teachers, etc.) to use technologies for
specific purposes. These nine dissertations typically involved doctoral students designing
an intervention or solution (i.e. professional development, course, guides, etc.) and
studying the outcomes of that intervention.
The problems of practice in the second category related to using technology to support
teaching and learning in a particular content area or for a particular educational objective.
These seven dissertations typically involved doctoral students designing instructional
activities or experiences and studying their effectiveness. Two dissertations did not fit
into either category as the problems of practice were related to ways to improve their own
practice. For example, one student sought to determine how (and if) his public health
start-up company would add a social media presence while another student sought to
improve her use of technology in advising by studying how those in similar roles use it.
The five dissertations that were classified as Not Embedded are not included here
because they did not address a specific problem in the students’ professional practice.
Guiding Principle #2: Insights. Unlike the embeddedness of the dissertations, whether a
student was in a practitioner or leadership-oriented role, did not seem to influence
whether their study fell into the “Teaching, professional development or support for
technology use” or “Using technology to support teaching and learning” category.
Instead, the content focus of their role tended to dictate this. Students with specific
content foci (i.e. art, nursing, international relations, mathematics, STEM, social studies,
physics, etc.) tended to design studies using technology as a tool to support content area
learning while students with technology-oriented foci (i.e. technology professional
development, educational technology faculty, technology administration, etc.) tended to
design studies focused on teaching individuals to use technology for various purposes.
The common goal of all these dissertations was to improve teaching and learning with or
through technology, be it in a specific content area or across content areas. Reflection on
their use of technology by the teachers and faculty involved was another common factor
amongst these dissertations. For example, “teaching, professional development or support
for technology use” dissertations collected data on teachers’ stages of concern during the
school-wide implementation of a technology and their reflections on how they had been
using it up to that point, while a “using technology to support teaching and learning”
dissertation conducted in a teacher education course articulated the instructor’s
reflections using an action research framework.
Guiding Principle #3: The problem is framed using relevant literature.
It is difficult to synthesize our analysis of this principle because each dissertation is so
unique but we did find that each dissertation was grounded in relevant literature even
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though its use was not constrained only to framing the problem. Students used literature
in four ways: to rationalize the problem of practice, to frame the study, to support design
of interventions, and to discuss findings or the implications of those findings.
When rationalizing the problem of practice, some students used literature more (i.e.
literature to support the need for more girls in STEM or a review of how public health
organizations use social media) while others more strongly supported the problem with
data from the professional context (i.e. 80% of teachers in the school report not being
comfortable using the new interactive whiteboards or our school has just invested money
in iPads but is unsure how to use them to support problem solving).
All the dissertations used literature to frame the study. In many cases this resulted in what
might be considered a traditional Chapter 2 literature review (Boote & Beille, 2005). But,
oftentimes this literature review was also used to support how the intervention was
designed. For example, in a dissertation about an embedded librarian in an online course,
a student wrote a robust literature review about the evolution of library support in
distance education and the ways in which librarians support online students. In describing
the design of her intervention, she drew upon theories in online learning, principles of
instructional design, and literature on self-efficacy development in information literacy.
In many cases content-specific literature was used to support intervention designs. For
example, literature from physics education, art education, STEM education, library
instruction, and nursing education was used to inform development of interventions.
In some cases the literature-based intervention design was included as a separate chapter.
This was particularly common in dissertations involving professional development or
course design. For example, when designing an online mentoring community to support
STEM interest in middle school girls, a student theoretically grounded her design in
social constructivism and applied principles from STEM education, online learning
communities, mentoring, situated cognition and cognitive apprenticeship and student-
centered learning environments.
Guiding Principle #3: Insights. After our analysis we recognize that this guiding principle
is too narrow. Even though we always envisioned students using relevant literature to
support the dissertation work, our guiding principle only focused on using literature to
support the problem of practice. We were impressed with the depth to which students
used literature to frame their studies and inform the design of their interventions (See
Antonenko’s article in this issue for more information about using literature in
professional practice dissertations). In designing our program we believed that the
application of literature would be a distinguishing feature between how a professional
practice doctoral student approaches a problem of practice and how a typical practitioner
might. We now have evidence to suggest that our professional practice students access
literature to solve additional problems of practice during the program as well as after
graduation (See Kumar’s article in this issue).
Guiding Principle #4: The problem is addressed using relevant methods.
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The methods used in these professional practice dissertations varied because methods are
driven by the problem of practice and the literature that informs each study. The
problems of practice that were Directly Embedded in a student’s professional context
(See Guiding Principle #1) often resulted in questions that were evaluative in nature. For
example, one student who served as a District-level Technology Integration Specialist in
a system that had recently purchased student response systems and mobile interactive
whiteboards for every secondary core academic classroom was tasked with providing
professional development on this new technology. Her dissertation related to evaluating
this professional development using Guskey’s Five Levels of Professional Development
(Guskey, 1998) as her conceptual framework. She asked a question related to each level
of Guskey’s model and used relevant data collection and analysis methods for each. The
results of her study were used to develop subsequent professional development in her
district and now the district includes more robust evaluation as part of every professional
development effort.
Students whose dissertations were Indirectly Embedded often addressed problems of
practice that were less evaluative in nature. For example, a School-level Technology
Integration Director recently purchased iPads for her PK-12 campus and she studied ways
preschool dyads used digital scaffolds and whether ability groups influenced this use. She
framed her study using literature about developmentally appropriate practice for
preschool children, touch devices, scaffolding, digital scaffolding, ability grouping and
game-based learning. Then, she used descriptive research methods (Knupfer & McLellan,
1996) to answer her research questions and develop recommended practices for using
iPads with young children in the school.
Other methodological approaches included the interview guide approach (Patton, 1990),
case study (Stake, 1995; Yin, 2009), action research (Dana & Yendol-Hoppey, 2009;
Herr & Anderson, 2005), transcendental phenomenology (Mustakas, 1994), qualitative
research (Gay, Mills & Airasian, 2009; Rossman & Rallis, 2012), CIPP evaluation
model (Stufflebeam, 2000), survey design and hierarchical linear modeling (Raudenbush
& Bryk, 2002).
Data collection strategies also varied and ranged from pre-post tests and surveys to
observations and field notes, interviews, focus groups, log data, researcher reflective
journals, standardized test scores and artifact analysis. Likewise, data analysis techniques
varied and included qualitative coding, constant comparison, thematic analysis, content
analysis, t-tests, ANOVA, multilevel modeling, descriptive statistics and exploratory
factor analysis.
Guiding Principle #4: Insights. Methods follow logically from the conceptual frameworks
and research questions asked and the questions asked here came from the problems of
practice. While a variety of methodology approaches were used, we found that many
were qualitatively oriented because students were often looking to study a problem in
depth in a small context. Even when students used more quantitatively oriented methods,
they were often limited by sample size (except in the case of students not studying in
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their own practice) and typically used such data in combination with other, more
qualitative, data.
As previously mentioned, the dissertations emphasized the importance of recognizing
researcher biases through subjectivity statements and ensuring the IRB approval in the
local context (not just with the university). Criteria for rigor like transferability,
credibility, confirmability and dependability or reliability and validity were also evident.
While this is quite logical and important to research, we now recognize rigor should be
included in our guiding principles.
We think we can speak for our program area colleagues when we admit to struggling
with helping students identify questions and methods that we felt were adequate for
dissertation research, and yet manageable and realistic in professional practice contexts.
But, we find this often happens when advising Ph.D. dissertations as well. The difference
is that the primary goal of professional practice research is to improve the context in
which the research occurs. We found ourselves (and our colleagues) struggling with this
at times and we think that the more tradition a faculty member’s own doctoral experience
was in terms of defining the nature, scope and purpose of research the more challenging
this situation can be.
In addition, the more advisor-driven a faculty member’s own dissertation topic was, the
more we think they may struggle in helping students identify problems within their own
practice. While it is not uncommon for an advisor’s research agenda to drive Ph.D.
dissertations, selecting a professional practice dissertation topic is necessarily a student-
centered activity. If professional practice doctoral degrees in Educational Technology are
to serve a different purpose than research doctoral degrees, this is an important
distinction. Agreement about the purpose of the degree among all faculty members
advising dissertations in a professional practice program can help to increase their
awareness about the purpose of a professional practice dissertation.
Guiding Principle #5: The dissertation discusses implications for professional practice.
We categorized the implications into three categories – implications for the field,
implications for the students’ immediate work environment and implications for the
student. These categories are not mutually exclusive and some dissertations included
implications from all three of these categories.
Implications for the field. Implications from fourteen dissertations fell in this category.
These implications were not directly related to the professional practice setting in which
the dissertation occurred. For example, a student made recommendations for developing
and implementing technology-rich professional development but did not relate these
recommendations to her context or her practice. Similarly, a student provided
implications for advisors wishing to use technology in their practice but did not directly
apply these implications to her context or practice. Students did note the limitations
related to generalizability because of the very specific local contexts studied. Yet, much
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can be learned from such studies especially when issues of rigor are addressed (See
Guiding Principle #4) and thick, rich description is used to situate the study.
Implications for the students’ immediate professional context. Implications from nine
dissertations fell in this category. These implications were drawn from dissertation
findings and directly related to the professional practice setting in which the dissertation
took place. For example, one student developed an 8-step plan for moving her teacher
education program forward using Technological, Pedagogical Content Knowledge
(TPACK) as an instructional framework while another student used his findings to create
an action plan for his start-up organization. Another student developed action items for
increasing the use of synchronous sessions within her virtual school while another student
developed faculty reference guide to support her faculty in developing blended modules.
Implications for the students: Eight dissertations included personal implications. For
example, a student who studied synchronous sessions in an online art course wrote:
Prior to this study, I was convinced that online education’s greatest benefit
was how it expanded access, allowing exposure to art for more students.
Due to my experiences as a classroom researcher, my ideas concerning
teaching art online have changed focus. While focusing on providing an
additional method of teaching to students, I discovered that I had improved
my instructional delivery.
Another student who designed professional development as part of her role as a school
level technology integration specialist wrote:
This study has influenced my stance related to PD; going forward, I will
create a more formalized PD session with increased collaboration from
teachers to meet their individual needs—this will help improve my
practice, as teachers need more collaboration so they can transfer their
learning to authentic, real-world experiences.
Guiding Principle #5: Insights. It is worth noting that all the dissertations related findings
to existing literature and maybe we should have addressed this under Guiding Principle
#2. But, the main purpose of the professional practice dissertation is to improve practice
therefore here we focus on these implications.
Our vision was to have students exhibit reflective thinking by articulating how their
dissertation personally influenced them as practitioners and as scholars. Yet, such
reflective thinking was only present in eight dissertations whereas implications for the
field were included in 14 dissertations. We believe this is the result of several factors –
the embeddedness of the study (see Guiding principle #1), our inexperience in mentoring
professional practice dissertations, the methodology chosen and the time constraints and
fatigue related to post-defense revisions. That is, the more embedded a study was within
professional practice, the more likely it was that students included specific implications
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for professional practice. Similarly, the more a particular method supported reflective
data collection (i.e. action research versus hierarchical linear modeling), the more likely
personal implications were included.
As a program area faculty, we are all relatively new to mentoring these types of
dissertations and to mentoring online doctoral students (See Kumar, Johnson &
Hardemon, 2013 for an article about online mentoring in our program). The latter two
types of implications (i.e. professional context and personal) are not necessarily included
in traditional research dissertations. Even though such implications were part of our
vision, many dissertations did not include all types of implications. We have since
designed a diagram (See Figure 1) that will help us better guide students in writing
implications commensurate with professional practice dissertations. Basically, we want
students to begin by thinking about how what they learned will inform their own practice
(i.e. center of the circle) then consider how their results influence the immediate context
(i.e. middle of the circle) and, finally, how they might influence others in the field (i.e
outer circle). We also plan to make this guiding principle more explicit (see next section).
Our experience mentoring all types of doctoral dissertations tells us that the discussion
and implications sections of most dissertations are where the majority of post-defense
revisions occur. Students often become tired toward the end of the writing process and
lose a bit of their creativity and defense conversations help solidify the contents of these
sections. But, often, advisors and committee members spend less time providing feedback
on such revisions due to time constraints and fatigue. As a faculty, we must be cognizant
of this and ensure all three types of implications appear prior to the dissertation defense
because these implications are an essential part of professional practice dissertations.
When we collected data after students graduated from the program (See Kumar’s article
in this issue), we noticed that change in the local contexts had occurred more frequently
when students had articulated their implications for their immediate professional context
in the dissertation. Students who put forth an action plan, implications for professional
development or for course design in their context on the basis of their findings were able
to present these to stakeholders and such implications were actually implemented in their
practice. These data suggest that including implications for the immediate professional
context is essential to achieving our program goals of influencing educational technology
practice.
What we learned from our analysis
The process of analyzing the first 23 dissertations completed in our program was
advantageous for several reasons. First, it assured us that our students are producing
dissertations that represent quality scholarship that influences practice and for which we
can be proud. Second, it provided us with a great opportunity for professional dialogue
guided by data. Faculty in our program have had many conversations about the data used
for this article and we have learned so much about how we mentor (both individually and
as a program), what our students produced and what we can improve on going forward.
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Third, the process made us realize that, for the most part, we like the way we structure
our professional practice dissertation experience. While we have read about other
programs that use a thematic, group or team approach (Marsh & Dembo, 2009; Smrekar,
2008), promote one methodology (Wetzel & Ewbanks, 2013) or scaffold the dissertation
throughout the program (ProDEL, 2012), we see great value in having Educational
Technology students in our program independently (but with support from peers and
faculty) study a problem from their own professional contexts. We say this because our
program does not recruit cohorts from specific professional practice settings (i.e. 25
teachers from one school or district) or with a particular expertise (i.e. Educational
Leadership in K-12 schools). When all students work in the same place we can visualize
how thematic dissertations and team approaches may be very powerful ways to promote
wide scale change. We can also see how one method such as action research might be
appropriate if all students are in a K-12 context because K-12 environment are
particularly well suited to action research work. But, given the wide variety of students
attracted to our Educational Technology program, we think our model of independence
works well. We recognize faculty workload is a downside to our model but we believe
mentoring these dissertations will become easier with experience, with our increasing
proficiency at identifying quality professional practice students during the admission
process and as a result of research such as this.
Fourth, we recognize the importance of articulating our guiding principles in written
form. We talked about these principles as a faculty team but we did not share them with
our students in written form. While this seems like a silly oversight now, anyone who has
designed a program from the ground up knows that it is often compared to building an
airplane while flying it. That is, we were figuring out the professional practice
dissertation process while students completed the first dissertations. We also plan to share
these guiding principles with committee members because we spend a considerable
amount of time educating colleagues about the nature and purpose of professional
practice dissertations in Educational Technology.
Fifth, our analysis has helped us think about how to refine our guiding principles and we
discussed some of these changes briefly within the sections above. We know some
programs use rubrics to guide dissertations but, given the variety of dissertations we
analyzed, we feel rubrics would be unnecessarily limiting for our students. What follows
are revised guiding principles we will use with our third cohort of students who take
qualifying exams this summer and then begin the dissertation process.
or context.
practice and is related to Educational Technology.
Guiding Principle #3: Relevant literature is used to rationalize the problem, frame the
study and support design of interventions.
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Guiding Principle #4: The problem is framed with relevant research questions that are
addressed using appropriate methods.
Guiding Principle #5: The dissertation demonstrates adequate rigor.
Guiding Principle #6: The dissertation discusses implications for professional practice at
three levels – the student, the immediate context, and the field.
Conclusions
We hope this analysis is useful to others who have recently started online professional
practice doctoral degrees in Educational Technology or who are considering it. We do not
claim to have all the answers and we learned from this analysis that at least three different
variables come into play when students work to complete a professional practice
dissertation in an online Educational Technology program. First, of course, are program
variables. Programs are very contextual with different designs, different emphases during
the dissertation process, different admission criteria and different university rules and
regulations. Student variables are also important as a student’s professional practice
context and personal goals influence the level of embeddedness of the dissertation. A
student’s ability to be self-directed and take feedback from a distance is also an important
variable in the dissertation process. Finally, committee variables come into play. We
spent a considerable amount of time educating committee members about the purpose of
professional practice doctoral degrees in our Educational Technology. Most members
were in complete support of the distinction between professional practice dissertations
and research dissertations. Some committee members placed a heavy emphasis on
ensuring certain literature was included in the dissertation while others strongly
advocated for certain methods over others or felt strongly about a certain conceptual
framework. This is really no different from what happens on committees for research
dissertations but, in many ways, the committee variables become more apparent because
the professional practice dissertation is completed from a distance. Committees and
students must learn to negotiate this distance and it seems to play out in slightly different
ways with each committee.
We recommend others developing plans for professional practice dissertations in online
Educational Technology doctoral programs develop a set of guiding principles for the
dissertations, share these guidelines with students and committee members and be
cognizant of the program, student and committee variables that will influence the unique
way in which each student will complete the dissertation process.
References
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