3   Building an Online Community of Researching Professionals

The retention of professionals in online doctorates is influenced by the students’ sense of connectedness to the institution and their peers and by their sense of belonging to an online academic community with shared goals and challenges. Students in traditional programs have been known to experience three stages: transition and adjustment, the attainment of candidacy, and the dissertation (Tinto, 1993). During the first stage, they acclimatize to the expectations and rigours of doctoral study and connect with their faculty members, department, and peers. In the second stage, students acquire the knowledge and skills needed to advance to candidacy and conduct individual doctoral research. The dissertation stage is the one most influenced by the student-mentor relationship. In many disciplines in the United States, the first two stages are usually integrated into coursework with structured expectations and assignments.

In an online professional doctorate, the building of community among professional students located at a distance from the institution and each other is crucial in the first two stages; the relationships with faculty and peers that students build during these stages carry them through the rigours of the less structured dissertation stage. According to Kember (1995), distance graduate students also go through three phases: separation, transition, and incorporation. Kember asserts that, unlike traditional students, distance graduate students adjust to their role as a student while also fulfilling other roles. During this process, they constantly assess the value of their educational experiences, and social and academic integration are the key factors in their decision to continue their education.

The feeling of connectedness to their academic program, their peers, and the institution at which they study, a feeling that tends to be stronger in the context of a robust support community, can help online doctoral students persist and succeed while juggling multiple commitments and challenges. In this chapter, we describe the design of an online community of inquiry that facilitates interactions about theory, research, and practice and helps online professional students build relationships that will support them throughout the program. Following a brief overview of the literature on community, connectedness, and transactional distance in the online environment, we describe in detail the critical roles of faculty presence, social presence, cognitive presence, and learning presence in the building of a community of inquiry. The chapter ends with key considerations for others seeking to build such a community.

ONLINE INTERACTIONS AND DIALOGUE

Transactional distance, the “psychological and communication space” (Moore, 1993, p. 22) between interacting people in an online environment, can be bridged with the help of dialogue. According to Moore (1983), the amount of dialogue between the teacher and the learner in the online environment is inversely proportional to transactional distance—the more the dialogue, the less the distance and vice versa. However, the theory of transactional distance acknowledges the existence of other variables that influence the learner-teacher dialogue, including the personalities of the learner and teacher, the program content, and the technologies used to communicate, all of which can influence the transactional distance. Moore contends that the amount of structure provided in an online environment also influences learner autonomy: an environment that is less flexible and provides fewer options to the learner to make choices results in low learner autonomy. Moore’s description of autonomous learners corresponds well to the doctoral endeavour, and the structure needed in the online environment must inform the instructional design of online professional doctorates. Moore asserts that dialogue in online transactions should be “purposeful, constructive and valued by each party. Each party in a dialogue is a respectful and active listener; each is a contributor, and builds on the contributions of the other party or parties. The direction of a dialogue in an educational relationship is toward the improved understanding of the student” (p. 24). Learners as responsible decision-makers in their learning and the teacher as a guide make the theory of transactional distance a useful framework for the online professional doctorate.

Dialogue plays an important role in online learning and is essential to learner motivation and retention. For a learning environment to be effective, it must include opportunities for learner-content interaction, learner-teacher interaction, and learner-learner interaction (Moore, 1989). An online environment available to learners 24/7 makes it possible for all three types of interaction to occur at any place and anytime, as long as the learners and the instructors have access to it. These interactions can take place synchronously in real time or asynchronously and in different virtual spaces, but they can provide for consistent connections among online learners. In an online professional doctorate, such interactions are particularly valuable for working professionals embedded in work and personal communities, because the professionals can remain connected to an online academic community and academic conversations. Purposeful design based on prior research can be extremely beneficial for doctoral students and instructors in terms of professional development, cognitive development, and psychosocial support.

Learner interactions have been categorized as either task driven or socioemotional, a distinction that is helpful in designing online environments. Task-driven interaction relates to the completion of tasks—such as discussion prompts, group projects, or peer assessments—set by the instructor, while socioemotional interactions are interactions originating from learners that involve sharing information, emotions, and encouragement (Hare & Davies, 1994). It is possible to design curricula that provide opportunities for online interactions of both types. Although a task-driven prompt does not originate from the learner, it can encourage learners to share information about themselves, their challenges, and their strengths and can lead to socioemotional interactions that continue and evolve beyond the specified task. It is important to provide openings for such dual-purpose interactions because “the more one discloses personal information, the more others will reciprocate, and the more individuals know about each other, the more likely they are to establish trust, seek support, and thus find satisfaction” (Cutler, 1996, p. 326). The establishment of trust is critical for learners to feel comfortable interacting with each other in the online environment, for learner motivation and willingness to engage, and for the sustainability of online interactions. The provision of a safe environment where it is clearly acceptable to be vulnerable—to make mistakes, share concerns and anxiety, and reveal weaknesses—is crucial in an online doctorate. In the face-to-face environment, such relationships are built in graduate student meetings and student cafés and during informal meetings on campus. In the absence of physical spaces, it is critical to structure safe online learning spaces and opportunities for interactions because in the absence of a safe environment, students will not feel comfortable sharing their anxieties, constructively critiquing the work of others, and giving honest feedback, all of which are important for building a sense of connectedness and community and for program completion.

SENSE OF COMMUNITY AND COMMUNITY BUILDING ONLINE

An online environment in which students feel comfortable interacting with each other and their instructor is insufficient if it does not also foster feelings of connectedness and belonging to an institution and peer group, which is essential for student retention in higher education—especially doctoral education. At the doctoral level, a sense of connectedness can influence motivation and persistence, prevent isolation and anxiety, and assist in the completion of doctoral studies, which are often fraught with challenges and anxiety (Kumar & Johnson, 2014). Terms such as psychosocial support, social integration, community, community building, and sense of community abound in the literature on student retention, doctoral student support, online course design, and online learning environment design (Hayes & Koro-Ljungberg, 2011; Palloff & Pratt, 1999; Rovai, 2002b; Tinto, 1993). Especially for adults who are self-directed and driven by their need to learn, a sense of community is important for program completion. While acknowledging the importance of the other concepts listed above, we focus in this section on sense of community and community building. We discuss psychosocial support in the context of online dissertation mentoring in a later chapter.

In the online environment, common interests and social relationships can create feelings of transactional proximity despite geographical dispersion. McMillan and Chavis (1986) define sense of community as “a feeling that members have of belonging, a feeling that members matter to one another and to the group, and a shared faith that members’ needs will be met through their commitment to be together” (pp. 8–9). They identify the four elements of community as membership, or a feeling of belonging and personal relatedness; influence, or “a sense of mattering, of making a difference to a group and of the group mattering to its members” (p. 8); the integration of members; and (d) an emotional connection based on sharing feelings and thoughts and having similar experiences. Extending this definition, Rovai (2002b) identifies two additional aspects of community—connectedness and learning. Connectedness refers to spirit (sense of cohesion and bonding) and trust among individuals, as well as to the sharing (interaction), challenging, and nurturing that take place within a group, while learning “reflects the commitment to a common educational purpose” (Rovai, 2002a, p. 3) and is supported by interactions among group members. Learning interactions that allow reflection on individual and group progress, foster sharing and critiquing, and are based on similar interests and common goals lead to a sense of community. Rovai (2002a) views learning as the knowledge and meaning actively constructed, acquired, and sustained in a social community of learners who share knowledge, values, and goals. Such community is built on interactions, and students with a stronger sense of community achieve greater levels of cognitive learning (Tinto, 1993).

We have found that a sense of community is essential to student success in an online professional doctorate, where learning and feelings of connectedness emerge through shared challenges, successes, and educational goals; individual and shared professional goals; and the building of shared knowledge and values from individual disciplines and professional contexts. Many different factors can influence the building of community, and the literature offers many lenses through which to view community. In this book, we base our discussion of community building in an online professional doctorate on a widely recognized framework in online education—the community of inquiry framework, developed by Garrison, Anderson, and Archer (2000).

THE COMMUNITY OF INQUIRY IN A PROFESSIONAL DOCTORATE

The community of inquiry framework provides a useful structure for conceptualizing online teaching and learning in an online professional doctorate. Grounded in theories of adult learning, the University of Florida’s EdD EdTech was conceptualized as a community of inquiry in which students in a cohort with common goals advance through a structured program, purposefully interact with and support one another, and receive intensive support from faculty members (Kumar, Dawson, Black, Cavanaugh, & Sessums, 2011; Kumar, 2014c). In the sections that follow, we review the three main dimensions of the community of inquiry framework—teaching presence, social presence, and cognitive presence—as well as learning presence, an additional dimension that researchers recently proposed. We detail how each of the four dimensions of the framework can inform the design of an online professional doctorate that aims to facilitate transformational learning. We also provide examples of implementation and findings from research conducted in the UF EdD EdTech that support our assertions about the value of these four dimensions in an online professional doctorate.

FACULTY PRESENCE

Anderson, Rourke, Garrison, and Archer (2001) define teaching presence as “the design, facilitation, and direction of cognitive and social processes for the purpose of realizing personally meaningful and educationally worthwhile learning outcomes” (p. 5). An instructor’s ability to design, plan, structure, and organize an online course becomes extremely important when the opportunity for face-to-face interactions is limited or nonexistent. Based on our research in the first two iterations of the UF EdD EdTech, we realized that teaching presence in an online professional doctorate can be more accurately termed faculty presence, meaning that multiple faculty members not only teach, support, and mentor online doctoral students in multiple virtual environments about research and professional goals but also administer the program (Kumar et al., 2011; Kumar & Ritzhaupt, 2014). We define faculty presence in terms of instruction and mentoring, curriculum design and sequencing, and program leadership, all of which can successfully contribute to the design of an online professional doctorate.

Instruction and Mentoring

In online courses, where students do not see the instructor in a physical classroom, teaching presence is crucial for student learning, and the creation of a community of inquiry (Akyol & Garrison, 2008; Shea, Li, & Pickett, 2006). Anderson et al. (2001) identify the components of teaching presence as instructional design and organization, the building of understanding, and direct instruction in the subject matter. These components include the facilitation of student interactions, the management of discourse, and the provision of effective and immediate feedback. In summary, teaching presence encompasses instructor organization and communication in all aspects of an online course (Shea, Hayes, & Vickers, 2010). Doctoral students also require mentoring in the form of program planning, research support, and writing support to leverage the opportunities presented by professional organizations, conferences, grant projects, and networking in their disciplines. In an online doctoral program, faculty presence, therefore, transcends instructional design, direct instruction, and facilitation of program coursework and takes the form of direct instruction and facilitation of program interactions about topics that develop habits of mind in that profession or discipline (Kumar et al., 2011). Furthermore, students’ relationships with faculty mentors or supervisors are important factors in their completion of a dissertation because these relationships shape students’ research skills, professional identities, and careers. Therefore, in addition to online course design or facilitation, faculty in an online doctorate must be able to advise, encourage, model disciplinary thinking, and develop mutual trust in the absence of face-to-face communication.

We used an adapted version of the community of inquiry (CoI) survey (Arbaugh et al., 2008) at the end of the first year of the first three program iterations of the UF EdD EdTech. Students in each iteration agreed that faculty presence, feedback, and support were strengths of the program (Kumar, 2014c). Faculty in our discipline of educational technology possess expertise in online teaching and learning, instructional design, course structure, and organization that has enabled them to create a structured course sequence, ensure consistent communication between students and faculty within courses and about program-level issues, and provide instruction that helps students apply their knowledge to further their professional goals. Because of their comfort with the online environment, faculty members are also able to develop respectful relationships based on subject-matter expertise, online interactions, and trust. A student commented in the anonymous CoI survey that “the courses have been satisfying and well-designed, and I personally feel that I have learned a great deal on the topic, on my specialties, and on myself due to the instruction, feedback, and support of the faculty” (November, 2013).

However, when faculty members without online teaching experience have taught in our program, we have received negative feedback from the students. If instructors do not have previous experience with designing and implementing online courses, they should receive opportunities to learn strategies for crafting online activities that will foster critical thinking, for facilitating online discourse, and for structuring tasks that will help students meet course goals, program goals, and professional goals. They should also receive guidance in developing an online course and in online instructional design. In general, online courses in a professional doctorate should include the following:

• opportunities for synchronous and asynchronous interactions with professionals and peers
• reflection and discourse that connects theory, research, and practice
• structure that helps working professionals plan the time and effort required to succeed
• support in accessing and using on-campus resources (e.g., library databases)
• multiple types of resources, multimedia, and assessment formats to encompass the wide range of learning preferences.

Curriculum Design and Course Sequencing

In addition to faculty presence in the form of structuring interactions, facilitating discourse, and providing feedback, a curriculum that emphasizes consistent faculty presence is crucial in an online doctorate. We purposefully created the curriculum for the UF EdD EdTech to combine theory, research, and practice and to be relevant, situated, and reflective for professionals. One faculty member owns each online course in the program and is responsible for teaching it and keeping it current. Courses are sequenced to help students acquire the skills and knowledge needed at the dissertation stage. While the program coordinator leads the vision for the curriculum, all courses and their content, the faculty members who create and teach the courses are involved in regular meetings about how their courses fit into the complete curriculum. These conversations are necessary for maintaining faculty presence and consistent instructional design across the program. The courses also allow for all faculty members to teach a core course to students in the first two years so that the students get to know all faculty members well before working with them on their research design and dissertation.

What constitutes theory and research and how to apply it to practice in an online professional doctorate differs among disciplines, but the foundational knowledge for each discipline is generally clear, as are the research methods with which researching professionals should be familiar. The depth of knowledge in the area of specialization within the discipline and the types of research that students would need to conduct to demonstrate expertise may differ based on the program, faculty member, and institution. Nevertheless, the doctoral curriculum must be carefully structured to provide students with opportunities to acquire knowledge and assess that knowledge in all of these areas. Program professionals often begin by attempting to move a successful on-campus program online. Although this may succeed for individual courses, creating an online program requires additional structure and planning, different types of activities that are planned across courses, and careful and detailed design for intentional interaction. Program designers often underestimate the amount of formal and informal on-campus faculty-student and student-student interactions that take place on campus, so the opportunities for similar interaction must be purposefully included in online environments. This is especially important for professionals embedded in work environments at a distance from the university.

In the first iteration of the UF EdD EdTech, student feedback in the form of interviews and a survey indicated that content and assignments sometimes overlapped or were similar across courses and that knowledge needed at the qualifying examination and dissertation stages had not been delivered in the coursework. Although it is not possible to cover all areas that may be important for qualifying exams, this feedback prompted us to streamline the curriculum across core courses. We continued to collect feedback from each cohort and modified both the curriculum and the sequence of courses based on this feedback.

Program Leadership

In the UF EdD EdTech, online doctoral students complete two years of structured coursework before working one on one with faculty members to conduct research and write their dissertations. In the first iteration, two faculty members led the program while two others participated in weekly meetings and discussions. Because of the collaboration and understanding between the two leading faculty members, this model was successful in communicating a common vision and cohesive faculty presence to students. Nevertheless, the demands of teaching, research, and service make it difficult for multiple faculty members in a program to remain consistently involved in collaborative leadership. In our case, this led to the hiring of a faculty member who serves as program coordinator and the initial academic adviser for all students, while other faculty members continue to participate in weekly meetings and updates. Based on the success of this initiative, we recommend that a full-time faculty member assume leadership of a program for a certain period of time, and that such leadership be rotated, if possible.

Although some instructors will inevitably be more involved than others in the various facets of a program, and although programs may use a combination of full-time and part-time faculty members, we believe that a uniform vision and effective communication of that vision is essential for the success of an online professional doctorate. In order to truly represent the program as a cohesive faculty, all instructors involved in an online professional doctorate should be familiar with the theoretical foundations, requirements, and goals of the program in general and should understand how their courses or subject matter fit into the larger curriculum. Additionally, consistent communication between faculty about program-level issues, an understanding of administrative procedures, a reliable source for information on such procedures, and support structures for online students can provide students with a consistent experience across courses in an online program.

SOCIAL PRESENCE

Garrison et al. (2000) define social presence in the community of inquiry as the ability of learners to portray themselves as “real people” (p. 89), which, in the absence of face-to-face communication, must be done through online interactions. Social presence has also been defined as “reciprocal awareness by others of an individual and the individual’s awareness of others . . . to create a mutual sense of interaction that is essential to the feeling that others are there” (Cutler, 1995, p. 18). This perception of others being real or present has been found to influence learning outcomes, students’ cognitive presence, purposeful communication, and group cohesion (Hughes, Ventura, & Dando, 2007; Richardson & Swan, 2003; Swan & Shih, 2005). Group cohesion, the establishment of social relationships, and the feeling that others are present can strongly influence students’ motivation to interact, persist, and complete an online professional doctorate.

We have found that in an online doctoral cohort of students working in various parts of the globe in different job roles, identification with the community, purposeful communication within a safe environment, and the development of trust and social relationships are important for the creation of a sense of belonging, student retention, and student support of individual and collaborative inquiry. We agree with Akyol, Garrison, and Ozden (2009), who assert that social presence is “an important antecedent to collaboration and critical discourse because it facilitates achieving cognitive objectives by instigating, sustaining, and supporting critical thinking in a community of learners” (p. 67).

The stages of transition and adjustment, candidacy, and dissertation (Tinto, 1993) identified in traditional doctoral programs can be supported in the online environment by the use of a cohort model and the building of social presence. These strategies are crucial in the first stage of an online professional doctorate because they can help students proceed through the second and third stages, thus improving student retention. In the UF EdD EdTech, we have found that students who successfully complete the transition and adjustment phase (in our program, the orientation and the first semester) persist to become doctoral candidates, and approximately 70 percent have completed their dissertations. Several of our students have highlighted the role of cohorts and peer support in their successful candidacy and dissertation completion. In the next sections, we discuss the building of social presence during the first two stages of an online professional doctorate—transition and adjustment and candidacy—based on the design of the first two years of the UF EdD EdTech. We address the details of connectedness and community during the dissertation stage later in the book, when we focus on online mentoring.

During Transition and Adjustment

Our experiences in the UF EdD EdTech reinforce Swan’s (2003) assertion that the building of social relationships is foundational for purposeful communication and group cohesion. Making online acquaintances, exchanging ideas, and establishing long-term or intense associations with others are considered the three stages of online community creation to reach camaraderie (Brown, 2001). In our online professional doctorate, we aim to achieve such camaraderie at the end of two semesters, at the latest. In our first iteration, all of the students in our cohort met for the first time on campus for a summer session at the end of the first year and reported that social presence was strongest at this time (Kumar et al., 2011). As a result, for subsequent cohorts, we added an on-campus orientation to the beginning of the program. Feedback from the second cohort about the orientation included comments such as “Please consider changing the first summer meeting to allow for more cohort meeting and relationship building time, both with faculty and students” and “The intro session for Summer 2010 was terrific. I wish it were longer and provided more opportunities for getting to know each other.” Notwithstanding the opportunities provided online, we learned that a face-to-face meeting can speed up the process of students getting to know each other and faculty members, thus establishing a comfort level that can be built upon online. Students in both the first and second cohorts of the program rated on-campus meetings higher than online synchronous or asynchronous meetings for social presence (Kumar et al., 2011; Kumar & Ritzhaupt, 2014).

Nevertheless, during the initial orientation for our second cohort, students focused on the faculty members, whom they viewed as their main partners in the doctoral process, as well as on the content of the program and what they needed to do to succeed. Based on their previous master’s program experiences, in which peers had not played a major role in their success, they made minimal effort to connect with their peers. We emphasized during orientation the role that peers would play in future stages of the doctoral program, the support that they can provide, and the importance of community for decreasing isolation, but the emphasis was apparently inadequate because students did not realize the importance until later.

The orientation for the third cohort of students included time for students from the second cohort to share their experiences and highlight the role that the community and the cohort played in their successful progress. Hearing from prior students and graduates about the importance of peer support proved to be instrumental in the efforts new students made to get to know each other during the on-campus orientation. The third cohort cited this orientation as crucial for getting acquainted with peers and faculty members and for bonding. If an on-campus orientation is not possible because of travel constraints, program designers should consider an online synchronous orientation, followed by an online synchronous meeting during which students can get to know each other.

Students in an online professional doctorate are already part of multiple communities and networks (e.g., work communities and professional networks; personal communities of friends and family; and other social communities where they may participate in coaching, religious activities, and sports). To succeed in an online professional doctorate, students must become part of a new online academic community and participate in professional networks that promote and support scholarship and research in the discipline. They must realize the value of these communities and of other support structures to their studies and their professional activities. In addition to faculty-led environments, such as an intensive orientation and monthly online sessions to keep students connected during the first semester, it is important for students to have online spaces where they can interact in the absence of faculty (Kenney et al., 2013).

The second cohort in the UF EdD EdTech shared with faculty the value of a social network that kept them continually connected to their peers and increased their comfort levels with each other, providing psychosocial support and facilitating regular academic conversations. In the CoI survey, this cohort rated their Facebook group as second to the face-to-face summer session in terms of its value for building community and learning (Kumar & Ritzhaupt, 2014); one student commented, “The Facebook group was definitely what has allowed us to become a cohesive cohort.” During the orientation, students shared with the next cohort several examples of situations in which discussions on the Facebook group had helped them overcome frustrating moments and complete difficult assignments. The first task we set for our third cohort, therefore, was to choose a social network and build a group that would serve as a private medium to connect with peers. Data collected from this cohort indicated that the Facebook group was instrumental in building trust, in retaining four students who almost quit the program for varying reasons, and in supporting several others during the first year and beyond. A student from this cohort commented on social presence at the end of the first year in the anonymous CoI survey, stating, “The sense of community experienced online has been greater than the one experienced in face-to-face programs.” The most successful strategies for social presence in our program have been the use of a social network that is already part of students’ daily technology use and the student-driven approach that addresses individual and group needs (Kenney et al., 2013).

Social Presence for Candidacy

We define successful candidacy in a professional doctorate as the ability to successfully connect theory, research, and practice. To create a scholarly community in an online professional doctorate, interactions must be purposefully scaffolded not only within online coursework and smaller inquiry groups but also in the form of online synchronous meetings and on-campus meetings, when possible. The following sections describe different interactions that we view as valuable.

Online coursework. A course in an online professional doctorate should include multiple opportunities for synchronous and asynchronous interactions in multiple online spaces. In the UF EdD EdTech, three of four courses in the first year require two synchronous sessions during a semester, in addition to asynchronous meetings. Dates and times for these sessions are communicated well in advance to enable professionals in the program to plan to attend. Built into the courses are strategies for developing and maintaining social presence, such as welcome messages; the sharing of student profiles, work problems, and stories; audio and video messages from instructors; structured collaborative activities; peer feedback and frequent instructor feedback; and the use of humour (Aragon, 2003). Several activities in the courses require students to share their professional contexts and current problems of practice and make connections among theory, research, and those problems. In order to build social presence, students need to feel comfortable communicating online, both on discussion boards and in synchronous online sessions; they must also be willing and able to exchange feedback with their peers. If students are initially less familiar with certain forms of online communication, various strategies can be used to help them build social presence: for example, online tutorials, instructors’ tone and encouragement in the form of emails and presence, the modelling of effective communication, and a variety of communication media (i.e., synchronous, asynchronous, formal, and informal).

Inquiry groups. Based on their areas of research specialization, we group students together into inquiry groups of five or six students in the first semester of the UF EdD EdTech. These smaller groups allow students to build a smaller community with whom they can share their initial problems of practice and research questions and the related literature that they are exploring. Simultaneously, we place them in random groups for a collaborative assignment in another course. This gives students the opportunity to get to know a larger number of peers more closely and to choose individuals with whom they may want to work. In two other courses in the first year, students are encouraged to change and modify these groups based on their comfort levels and needs. Cohorts in our program have formed their own inquiry groups based on proximity (e.g., students living in the same state); context (e.g., students working in elementary schools or in the nursing profession); and research interest (e.g., students interested in gaming or gamification, albeit in different contexts). Periodically, these groups report on their collaboration during the online synchronous meetings.

The building of community in a cohort is essential for connectedness and retention, but the formation of smaller groups is necessary for students to work together on their research and support each other with feedback. Initial formal structures that force online students to interact help them get to know each other and to identify those with whom they would like to collaborate. This process of formal to informal small-group structures has been successful in the UF EdD EdTech in that it provides students with “critical friends” and additional opportunities to make connections between their professional practice and existing theories and research in the discipline. An open-ended student response in the “social presence” section of the CoI survey read, “Inquiry group work helped me define my niche and build a strong sense of community that I did not find in whole-group discussion within my courses.” Groups collaborate to various levels, from sharing and maintaining common resources in a bibliographic software (e.g., Mendeley) to actively reading each other’s dissertation drafts and practicing presentations together.

Online synchronous meetings. Compulsory monthly real-time conferencing sessions using software that enables live audio and video helps maintain communication outside of courses and provides opportunities for students and faculty to share information related to scholarship and professional events. We recommend that these meetings begin as faculty-driven events and, with a gradual transfer of responsibility, become student driven. In the UF EdD EdTech, faculty members initially structure these meetings to model scholarly thinking and a critical approach to the discipline. During initial sessions, faculty discuss their own professional conference experiences and current research projects, or current topics in educational technology. During the second semester, students plan and lead these sessions and share their thoughts about areas to research, conferences to attend, or their search for research literature. Eventually, inquiry groups lead these sessions, with students in the group making presentations about their collaboration and individual research projects. While maintaining communication and continuity outside of courses, these sessions facilitate conversations between faculty and students about the discipline and the doctoral process. Some cohorts may want to focus each session on a specific topic, such as research methods or a particular conference. In the UF EdD Ed Tech, topics covered include questions about the program, student concerns, and information about conferences and professional events. At the end of each semester, we solicit suggestions from students about topics that would help them in future semesters. One positive effect of these sessions is the strengthening of connection between students and faculty. A student from our second cohort reflected, “Synchronous sessions are great. Having all of the faculty participate is fantastic. It really makes me feel like they are interested in us and are invested in our success.”

Face-to-face meetings. In addition to the multiple opportunities to communicate and stay connected online, on-campus experiences help students get better acquainted and strengthen their connections with each other and with faculty (both in and outside of the program), administrators, librarians, and other resources on campus. The initial orientation and yearly face-to-face meetings emerged in our CoI surveys as extremely valuable for social presence and for the building of community (Kumar, 2014c; Kumar & Ritzhaupt, 2014). When students are able to get to know each other in a social environment (e.g., over dinner, while watching a game), they begin to perceive each other as individuals and not just fellow students. On-campus presence also makes it possible for faculty members to hold group or all-cohort sessions in which the intersection of theory, practice, and research can be communicated in a scholarly manner. Students can meet with faculty experts from outside the program, who share their expertise in areas such as academic writing and specific research methods.

In addition to these intentionally designed face-to-face experiences, program participants sometimes meet at off-campus venues, and these interactions also help to build scholarly community. Students may meet at professional events and conferences, and some online professional doctorates encourage and include seminars at such meetings. Student orientations or yearly meetings may take place at the leading conference in their disciplines. Students may collaboratively present a poster or paper at a conference, facilitating a face-to-face meeting and connections among program learning, professional application, and research in the discipline. In such contexts, students may interact with experts other than program faculty about their disciplines, various academic endeavours, and research and application in their professional practice. It is important to create opportunities within the doctoral program for students to reflect on these conference experiences and share them with peers.

Notwithstanding the value of different types of synchronous and asynchronous interactions that are purposefully built into an online professional doctorate to ensure social presence and productive scholarly dialogue, students who have common research interests also socialize in informal spaces such as Twitter, Google Hangouts, professional webinars, and LinkedIn Groups,. Strategies for using online spaces to stay connected in a scholarly community can be modelled by faculty members and discussed in synchronous sessions.

During the Candidacy and Dissertation Stages

By the time the students in the UF EdD EdTech are entering their second year, the synchronous and asynchronous interactions described above have built social presence and cohesiveness in our online cohorts. At this time, the larger cohort, as well as the smaller inquiry groups, begin to focus on building a set of resources about research topics and the larger discipline in preparation for qualifying exams. Activities that our cohorts have undertaken outside of required coursework include compiling a wiki with resources on different paradigms in educational technology that they could then use to study for qualifying exams, collecting notes that several cohort members had created about topics in educational technology and posting them in a virtual space, and building small study groups to discuss their strategies for preparing for qualifying exams.

After students complete qualifying exams, we encourage them to form a plan for supporting each other through the dissertation. In addition to online mentoring by faculty members, students adopt various strategies within their inquiry groups, such as asking peers for advice, meeting regularly online (or face to face, if possible), reading each other’s drafts; and providing feedback and motivating each other on Facebook (Kumar, Johnson, & Hardemon, 2013). Students in our program have often described both the psychosocial and academic support of their peers and cohort as crucial for dissertation completion.

COGNITIVE PRESENCE

Garrison et al. (2000) define cognitive presence as the ability of participants in a scholarly community to construct and apply meaning using sustained reflection and discourse. Cognitive presence is developed in four stages: the identification of a problem, the exploration of the problem individually and collectively through discourse, the integration or construction of meaning through exploration, and the resolution or application of meaning to new contexts (Garrison, 2003). Cognitive presence is influenced by faculty presence and social presence and especially by the instructional design of online activities, course structure, instructor feedback, and leadership (Garrison, Anderson, & Archer, 2001; Garrison & Cleveland-Innes, 2005; Garrison, Cleveland-Innes, & Fung, 2010). In a professional doctorate, however, students’ self-direction, reflection, and effort contribute as much to cognitive presence as does instructional design.

In the UF EdD EdTech, problem definition, exploration, and reflection are facilitated in the synchronous and asynchronous interactions described above, which have been rated highly in all offerings of the program and have provided students with multiple opportunities to apply newly acquired knowledge and skills in their professional contexts (Kumar et al., 2011; Kumar & Ritzhaupt, 2014). Similar to social presence, in an online professional doctorate, cognitive presence transcends formal program interactions as students interact with each other, faculty, colleagues, and experts in the field during professional conferences or on social media (Kumar et al., 2011). Cognitive presence thus develops in multiple learning environments, including those within and outside the university, formal and informal, and online and face to face. In an online professional doctorate that aims to connect theory, research, and practice, these various learning environments enculturate students into the discipline, familiarize them with scholarly thinking, and expose them to research and professional organizations in the discipline.

In designing an online professional doctorate, it is critical to consider the goals and learning objectives that correspond to cognitive presence. We define cognitive presence in terms of students’ professional growth, their adoption of a research-based approach, and their application of research in their professional practice to create positive change. To this effect, students identify a problem of practice early in the program, explore related theory and literature, and apply these to interventions and research over several courses in the program. Students have found this structure to be extremely beneficial, as reflected in student comments in the anonymous CoI surveys at the end of their first year. “I really appreciate being able to individualize our class projects to develop newly learned concepts within our work environment,” wrote one student, and another said, “The expectations of the program on the connection between theory and practice has definitely allowed me to grow in tangible ways as a professional.”

At various stages within courses, students share their progress with peers and faculty asynchronously and during face-to-face or online synchronous sessions. The discussion within inquiry groups is focused on similar interests and research and therefore tends to be deeper and more critical. A student statement at the end of the first year reflected on how social presence in smaller and larger groups and in formative feedback enhanced cognitive presence:

I was very prepared for the rigors of work that I would be engaged in, the time commitment necessary, the intense scheduling, and the support networks that I would need to be successful. I was not prepared, however, for the enrichment and engagement that would be present in the cohort model or the resulting personal evolution and growth. Specifically, this first year has had profound impacts on my personal perceptions, professional practice, overall understanding of doctoral study, and long-term professional goals. The opportunity to work alongside such incredible peers has been more rewarding and fulfilling than I could have imagined. (August, 2015)

For all three cohorts to date in the UF EdD EdTech, end-of-first-year surveys revealed high cognitive presence (see table 1). Designing curriculum and interactions with the goal of cognitive presence in mind can result in significant cognitive presence. Students reported applying knowledge and skills learned in their work contexts; developing a research-based and data-driven approach to their practice; and sharing their new knowledge at the local, regional, and national levels. For example, one student stated in the “cognitive presence” section of the end-of-first-year anonymous CoI survey, “This program has helped me to truly understand the role of research in my professional practice. Although others in my professional practice do not apply research, it has still been beneficial for me to maintain and apply that knowledge and approach to my job role” (November, 2013). The areas of impact reflect the development of scholarly habits of mind such as intentionality, metacognition, critical-mindedness, creativity, clarity of expression in oral and written communication, and professionalism (Costa & Kallick, 2008). We describe in detail these data and ways to assess these areas of impact in chapter 8.

Table 1. Cognitive Presence in Cohorts 1, 2, and 3 in the UF EdD EdTech

LEARNING PRESENCE

Notwithstanding the importance of strong faculty presence, social presence, and cognitive presence, it is only possible for connectedness and community to develop if the participants actively engage and participate. Each professional in an online doctoral cohort must be sufficiently motivated and able to engage and manage different types of interactions in a timely manner. This capacity for self-regulation, self-efficacy, and attendant effort is referred to as learning presence by Shea and Bidjerano (2010), who found that learning presence correlates positively with cognitive presence (Shea & Bidjerano, 2012). In the case of online doctoral students in a professional doctorate, self-direction and self-regulation in the form of planning, acting, monitoring, and assessing (Zimmerman, 2001) facilitates the reflection and metacognition essential for transformational learning and the completion of the doctorate.

Bachelor’s and master’s programs typically have mandatory course requirements and set goals and deadlines, whereas doctoral students are usually expected to decide what they will study and at what pace, when they will send their written work to faculty members, and how they will manage their progress. Students entering a professional doctorate are familiar with assignments that are completed for a particular faculty member and that focus on achieving a grade, but doctoral endeavours include writing for a larger audience, being open to criticism and feedback about ideas and writing, and improving on one’s work until it is deemed appropriate. In a professional doctorate, this also includes writing for audiences beyond the academy, because the goal is to synthesize theory, research, and practice. Additionally, although online coursework may be structured and scaffolded for the design, implementation, and writing of a dissertation, the management and timing of the latter stages of a doctorate are the responsibility of the student, which makes self-direction essential. We highly recommend communicating the importance of self-direction in an online professional doctorate while intentionally scaffolding activities that facilitate student reflection on existing study skills, knowledge, professional goals, and a realistic plan for completing the doctorate. In the UF EdD EdTech, students plan their work in the professional doctorate not only in terms of their professional trajectory, their in-program and out-of-program experiences, and the types of research that would supplement their professional goals but also in terms of their time, commitments, and study habits.

In an on-campus doctoral program, students meet each other and faculty, participate in projects and attend classes, see others defend proposals and dissertations, and finally graduate; therefore, they receive constant reminders of what they must do to succeed. In the online environment, especially in a professional doctoral program, during which students are busy with other commitments, scaffolds for reflection and metacognition must be built into both coursework and dissertation mentoring, and success stories must be shared to motivate students. Research on the efficacy of the UF EdD EdTech has revealed that strong faculty presence combined with structures that facilitate social presence is insufficient if students are not cognizant of their role in the process and do not realize the importance of learning presence (Kumar & Dawson, 2012b). Sharing with students our findings from earlier cohorts and the strategies that graduates have recommended for completing the degree have been extremely valuable for increasing learner presence during the first year of the online doctorate. Early graduates of the program have emphasized that their time management and self-regulation strategies were instrumental in finishing earlier than their peers, while later graduates praised the program design, which guided them to be self-directed, as a significant contributor to their completion of the program (Kumar et al., 2013). Individuals enter professional doctorates with prior experiences and with preconceptions of online learning from their previous formal and informal academic and professional experiences. If they do not know how to be successful online learners, existing literature and advice from those who came before them can help them adopt strategies for success.

KEY CONSIDERATIONS

Based on data we have collected during our research on the UF EdD EdTech, feedback from students and graduates, and our experiences in both cohort-based and non-cohort-based online programs, we strongly recommend the use of a cohort model and a consistent focus on community building for a successful online professional doctorate. Professionals attempting to connect research and theory to their practice will be far more successful if they feel engaged and supported by peers and faculty members than if they feel isolated in their endeavour. In this section, we provide a brief list of considerations for others focusing on community building in an online professional doctorate.

Ensuring faculty expertise in online teaching and mentoring. In an online professional doctorate, faculty presence consists of direct instruction; online mentoring; and the facilitation of interactions about connections among theory, research, and practice in the profession, in the discipline, and across multiple disciplines. Strong relationships between students and their faculty advisers and research mentors are crucial for the completion of the dissertation. Therefore, faculty in an online doctorate must be able to effectively mentor, communicate, and teach in the online environment; they must assume the roles of subject-matter expert, instructor, instructional designer, research adviser, professional guide, and administrator. Faculty members working in an online professional doctorate must receive professional development and guidance to help them succeed in these roles and to maintain faculty presence.

The breadth of skills and knowledge needed to implement a professional doctorate often requires the inclusion of instructors from multiple disciplines, such as those specializing in research and evaluation (e.g., qualitative or quantitative methods), management (e.g., project management, organizational behaviour), or education (e.g., teaching methods, educational technology). Instructors from various disciplines may subscribe to different signature pedagogies and beliefs about the nature of knowledge and how it should be measured, how their subjects need to be taught, and student and instructor roles in graduate courses and/or online courses. Program leaders should discuss with these external instructors the importance of community building; strategies for faculty, social, and cognitive presence; and existing noncourse structures for building community. While leaders need to be cognizant of instructors’ expertise in their subjects as well as their right to academic freedom, they must explain the needs of the professional doctorate, the differences between online and on-campus students and interactions, and the importance of quality and consistency in online course offerings.

Ensuring consistency in leadership and curriculum design. The careful sequencing of courses in a curriculum in order to set students up for success during the dissertation stage can decrease student frustration and faculty workload. In our experience, strong program leadership in which one faculty member is responsible for the program and oversees curriculum while keeping all involved instructors informed and included in decision making leads to clarity of program goals, consistency in the message conveyed to students, and cohesiveness in the program as a whole. In a doctoral program, students should feel comfortable reaching out to any faculty member at any time, based on their needs or research interests, and should feel supported by them, but they should also know exactly who to ask for immediate assistance. Additionally, the diversity of faculty and collaboration with faculty in other disciplines makes it important to create consistency in the course interface, the support provided, the use of cohort virtual spaces, the types of assessment, and the terminology used across courses. Administrative support and buy-in from leadership can contribute to collaboration and understanding across disciplines.

Designing for student-driven virtual spaces. Social presence during all three stages—transition and adjustment, candidacy, and dissertation—can be facilitated through multiple media and synchronous and asynchronous online interactions. Faculty-designed interactions in inquiry groups and regular online synchronous sessions help to facilitate social presence in different virtual spaces, and the gradual transfer of responsibility for these interactions from faculty to students has been successful in the UF EdD EdTech. At the same time, we highly recommend the use of a student-chosen and student-run social network group that keeps students connected to their peers, facilitates regular online academic conversations, and ensures psychosocial support. It is important for program leadership to communicate the need for and benefits of such a space—ideally, by inviting program graduates to share their experiences. Such communities are organic; therefore, although structures can be provided for the development of community, participants’ willingness to engage and their understanding of the value of such a community are essential to its success, making it crucial to explain to students their role in the building of a community.

Emphasizing the importance of learning presence. The completion of online coursework that includes deadlines for assignments and interactions is relatively easy for successful professionals who have prior experience with this type of education. However, the process of conducting research, setting deadlines to write and submit drafts, and analyzing data at one’s own pace can be extremely difficult when done for the first time. The importance of students directing themselves, implementing strategies for successful online learning, and asking for support must be explicitly communicated in an online professional doctorate. Students in the UF EdD EdTech have called this being “proactive, not reactive,” because they have found that to succeed, they must do more than simply complete what is required each week. In addition to explicit requirements in the program, they need to read about their areas of interest, regularly review how they are working toward their research goals, plan for conferences and other professional development opportunities, manage their research bibliography, and interact with experts. Furthermore, our doctoral students have described time management and time to participate in the community as learning presence strategies that are critical to success.

CONCLUSION

Professionals embarking on an online professional doctorate already belong to several networks and communities, both socially and professionally. Adding the role of online student and scholar and accommodating academic commitments and engagement in scholarly pursuits while remaining embedded in existing communities can be challenging for them. Curriculum that scaffolds for community building and scholarly networks is essential to helping professional students overcome these challenges and persist during the dissertation stage of an online doctoral program. As discussed in this chapter, designing a community of inquiry that facilitates community building involves integrating faculty presence, social presence, cognitive presence, and learning presence into an online doctoral curriculum. Communities, however, rely on frequent and robust interactions of participants and cannot be created in a top-down manner. The autonomous nature of doctoral study and the self-discipline needed by students in online education further complicate such endeavours because professional student interaction can be influenced by nonacademic factors and a variety of events in students’ lives. A curriculum that aims to build community, therefore, has to provide sufficient structure and scaffolding but must remain flexible and open to accommodate participants’ personalities and diverse experiences and interaction patterns.