Doctoral Dissertations at a Distance

Abstract

The model suggests that librarians can assume the role of co-supervisor to ensure that the literature review of a doctoral dissertation is comprehensive and relevant. Librarians can also assist research students, make sure their supervisors are kept abreast of new information resources in their research disciplines, and act as a mentor to both student and staff member in library matters. The model was developed in recognition of the special support needs of off campus research students who are disadvantaged by isolation, time and distance. It is anticipated that adoption of the model will lead to increased rates of completion, higher standards of research, an improvement in information and literacy skills of research students and supervisors, and reduced isolation for off campus researchers.     

Sharing the Stories of Racism in Doctoral Education: The Anti-Racism Project

Racism Project. Through shared journaling and group discussions, participants explored and interrogated experiences of racism related to doctoral education. A thematic analysis of qualitative data surfaced several themes: experiences with racism as a doctoral student, noticing the presence of White privilege, learning to teach as an anti-racist educator, and anticipating the job market. Through critical reflection, participants identified ways that schools of social work can better support doctoral students and prepare leaders committed to promoting racial justice.     

Teaching Software Designing Skills

Research has revealed a significant gap between the thinking patterns and software design habits of students or recent computer science university graduates and those of expert software developers.There may be several causes for this gap, one of which is undoubtedly the fact that throughout their studies students are mostly asked to write software programs of relatively lim-ited scope, and are not usually required to work as part of a team constructing a complex program.In the present paper we will describe a study unit intended to be taught as part of a high school computer science curriculum, which emphasizes the software system aspects. In a study that accompanied the development and actual teaching of the unit, we checked, among other things, whether the students acquired skills for developing a complex software system.     

Doctoral conceptual thresholds in cellular and molecular biology

ABSTRACT

In the biological sciences, very little is known about the mechanisms by which doctoral students acquire the skills they need to become independent scientists. In the postsecondary biology education literature, identification of specific skills and effective methods for helping students to acquire them are limited to undergraduate education. To establish a foundation from which to investigate the developmental trajectory of biologists’ research skills, it is necessary to identify those skills which are integral to doctoral study and distinct from skills acquired earlier in students’ educational pathways. In this context, the current study engages the framework of threshold concepts to identify candidate skills that are both obstacles and significant opportunities for developing proficiency in conducting research. Such threshold concepts are typically characterised as transformative, integrative, irreversible, and challenging. The results from interviews and focus groups with current and former doctoral students in cellular and molecular biology suggest two such threshold concepts relevant to their subfield: the first is an ability to effectively engage primary research literature from the biological sciences in a way that is critical without dismissing the value of its contributions. The second is the ability to conceptualise appropriate control conditions necessary to design and interpret the results of experiments in an efficient and effective manner for research in the biological sciences as a discipline. Implications for prioritising and sequencing graduate training experiences are discussed on the basis of the identified thresholds.     

"Thinking the Practice": Academic adult educators' reflections on mediating a summer institute as a multicultural learning journey for graduate students

In this paper we research our roles as academic adult educators who worked with 40 graduate students during a 10 day summer institute, which we developed using the theme "Culture and Diversity in Education for Adults". We discuss how we framed the development and delivery of this summer institute in the context of a transgressive and transformative learning journey that heeds Paulo Freire's (1998) call to "think the practice" by reading and comprehending the word and the world critically. From this perspective, we examine our positionalities that situate us as present, sometimes strong, yet sometimes vulnerable educators who use insurgent theories and positional pedagogies to shape alternative learning experiences. We also examine how these positionalities impact our conceptions of pedagogy and multiculturalism, and we explore how they helped to shape the inclusive teaching-learning interactions that we designed to query being, acting, becoming, belonging, and surviving in education and the larger Canadian and global cultures. In this regard we investigate how our learning journey emerged as one deeply textured by engagements with issues of educator and learner positionalities as well as matters of context, disposition, relationship, and affiliation. We explore how our learning journey with institute participants took us into the uneasy intersections of the personal, professional, and political where pedagogical practices and associated challenges, risks, possibilities, and liabilities emerge.     

The ‘dissertation marathon’ in doctoral distance education

Participation in “communities of practice” is often depicted as a central feature of various theoretical understandings of the social nature of learning. How are such communities of practice to be enacted in distance education, which, by definition, implies spatial detachment? This article reflects on the dimensions of communities of practice experienced by four students undertaking doctoral studies by distance education, working in different countries than the one in which the institution of their studies is based, and at four different phases of their doctoral program. In each writer’s experience, community of practice involvement was identified as critical in program completion, yet the source of the learning community was in each case outside of institutional provision.     

Facilitating reflective learning in higher education

Although writing groups have a long history in higher education, they have only recently been recognized as a support strategy for doctoral students, particularly those at the dissertation stage. From the perspective of student participants, we investigate motivations for participation in and perceived outcomes of voluntary semi-structured writing groups used to facilitate doctoral degree completion. Group participation resulted in the development of a vibrant intellectual community among students, recent doctoral recipients, and faculty. Commitment to degree completion and student and faculty scholarly productivity soared through the use of this simple but innovative pedagogical strategy.     

The learning alliance: ethics in doctoral supervision

This paper is concerned with the ethics of relationships in doctoral supervision. We give an overview of four paradigms of doctoral supervision that have endured over the past 25 years and elucidate some of their strengths and limitations, contextualise them historically and consider their implications for doctoral supervision in the contemporary university. Two common threads across the four paradigms are a view of doctoral supervision as pedagogical practice and that supervisors have primary responsibility for the supervision of doctoral students. We challenge these assumptions. In their place, we propose that the goal of doctoral supervision is praxis and that this involves a learning alliance between multiple institutional agents grounded in a relational ethics of mutual responsibility.     

Negotiating differences: cosmopolitan experiences of international doctoral students

Drawing on the literature on international student experiences and identities, this study discusses theories of identity from a social constructionist perspective. ‘Identification’ is the preferred term to describe a dynamic process through which students negotiate the meaning of their identities in different societies and communities. Based on interviews with 35 international doctoral students from two graduate schools in Germany, the article illustrates the significance of international mobility for education when external ‘differences’ are appreciated and contribute to cosmopolitan imaginations and when internal differences are created in relation to ‘Others’ in the host society. The article contributes to the literature on international student mobility by providing a fine-grained analysis of student identification, showing how the discourse of difference is used as a double strategy.