Further Considerations

The past decade has seen an increase in the number of professional doctorates offered in the United States, the United Kingdom, and Australia due to economic pressures, the need to implement research in the professions, and the drive to prepare a highly educated workforce (Kot & Hendel, 2012). This expansion has occurred alongside a convergence of online education and the need for doctoral education for professionals. In this book, we assert that professional doctorates and research doctorates are distinguished by the purpose of the degree rather than by its rigour. In short, research-oriented doctorates like the PhD prepare “professional researchers” while professional doctorates like the EdD prepare “researching professionals” (Bourner et al., 2001, p. 71). We also make the case that the online environment is an ideal medium in which to offer a program for professionals who would like to immerse themselves in theory and conduct research while remaining embedded in their practices.

Specifically, this book presents our model for online professional doctorates designed to prepare researching professionals, who combine foundational and theoretical knowledge in their disciplines (sometimes in more than one discipline) with knowledge of research in their contexts in order to conduct research that will primarily, but not exclusively, improve their professional contexts. Knowles’s (1980) andragogy, Mezirow’s (1990) transformative learning theory, Lave and Wenger’s (1991) work on situated learning, and the research base for online learning provide, in combination, a robust framework for the design of learning experiences in our model. Based on five years of study and three design and research iterations, we present our model as one that others can use when building a rigorous doctoral program for professionals in any discipline that aims to bridge theory, research, and practice and that is offered completely, largely, or partially online. In this conclusion, we share considerations for offering an online professional doctorate based on lessons learned while offering our program for researching professionals.

Numerous institutional structures and supports need to be in place to offer any online program. In 2009, a large-scale study on online learning identified “key organizational strategies, processes, and procedures that contribute to successful and robust online learning initiatives” (McCarthy & Samors, 2009, p. 5). The study was based on interviews with 241 administrators, faculty, and students, and more than 10,700 faculty survey responses from forty-five public institutions of higher education in the United States. The institution-wide issues related to online learning identified in this report are quite similar to those identified in reports from other countries, including the Australasian Council on Open, Distance, and e-Learning (Sankey et al., 2014) and the European Association of Distance Teaching Universities (Williams et al., 2012). The issues include faculty incentives, course life cycle issues, senior administration, academic quality and effectiveness, administrative and financial models, and technology.

Although these institutional issues are beyond the direct control of most faculty members (like us) who design online professional doctorates, it is important for program designers to understand how these issues are addressed at their institution. They must also recognize that even if their institution is mature in terms of offering online programs, many of these fundamental issues may “resurface or emerge in new ways” as programs evolve and, in particular, as different types of online programs are offered (McCarthy & Samors, 2009, p. 6).

We have found this to be true in our context. We work in an environment that is relatively mature in terms of offering online programs; in fact, the online graduate programs in our College of Education (which include our educational technology program) are currently ranked as the best in the United States by U.S. News and World Report.¹ Yet designing and implementing an online professional doctorate has required us to rethink many issues and has challenged some existing institutional structures and supports. Below, we discuss three broad areas (program, faculty, and support) in which we have experienced various challenges, and we present considerations that others may want to take into account as they design and offer an online professional doctorate.

PROGRAM CONSIDERATIONS

Numerous resources are available to faculty members to help them develop quality online programs (e.g., the Quality Matters framework [http://qmprogram.org] and the OLC Scorecard [http://onlinelearningconsortium.org/consult/quality-scorecard/]) and online courses (e.g., the Blackboard Exemplary Course Program Rubric [Blackboard, 2012] and the Rubric for Online Instruction [https://www.csuchico.edu/tlp/resources/rubric/rubric.pdf]). Many institutions have also developed their own frameworks for this purpose. For example, our university has developed the UF Standards and Markers of Excellence (http://teach.ufl.edu/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/UF-Standards-and-Markers-of-Excellence1.pdf). Faculty who are offering or planning to offer online professional doctorates must familiarize themselves with program-related standards and policies at their institution but must also recognize that these documents probably will not encompass everything they need to consider. We present some of these additional considerations based on our experiences offering the UF EdD EdTech.

Collaboration with Other Online Doctoral Programs

Our college offers three online doctoral programs, including the UF EdD EdTech. One program is offered outside our department and is conceptualized as a PhD program. The other one, focused on curriculum, teaching, and teacher education (CTTE), is offered in our department and is designed to prepare practitioner-scholars, or “professionals who bring theoretical, pedagogical, and research expertise to bear on identifying, framing, and studying problems of practice and leading informed change in their schools and districts to continually improve learning conditions for students and adults” (Adams, Bondy, Ross, Dana, & Kennedy-Lewis, 2014, p. 366). Both programs necessarily influence ours, the most salient example of this being the research requirements for online doctoral students in our college (discussed in more detail below). Faculty members across the three programs also serve as members on dissertation committees for the other programs.

The focus here is on how collaborative relationships among similar programs can be beneficial. Faculty members from the UF EdD EdTech and CTTE program regularly communicate with each other about their respective programs; coordinate course schedules and campus visits by cohorts so as to not overtask the college’s physical infrastructure; and share conceptual ideas and strategies related to the design, implementation, and evaluation of the programs. Although CTTE targets a more homogeneous audience (practitioners in K-12 environments) and adapts a different model (a professional practice doctoral model as proposed by Shulman et. al. [2006]), we have learned a lot from each other and we work collaboratively toward educating other faculty members in our department and college and developing a positive reputation related to the quality of online doctoral programs in our department. Others wishing to initiate an online professional doctorate within their discipline will benefit from extending a collaborative hand to similar programs and developing programmatic and individual relationships based on mutual respect and a culture of sharing.

Experience in Online Learning and Teaching

Prior to beginning an online professional doctorate, we had extensive experience teaching online and coordinating online programs in our discipline of educational technology. We also had a comprehensive understanding of the research related to online teaching and learning and, in fact, have been contributing to that knowledge base for years. Similarly, most of our students have at least minimal experience working in online environments, and some are expert practitioners in this area. These experiences and understandings enabled our students and us to adapt with ease to the online medium.

Faculty and students from other disciplines may not have such knowledge and may need to take time to learn about online teaching and learning before embarking on an online professional doctorate. Similarly, students may need an introduction to and practice with the online environment prior to beginning the program. They may also initially need additional support learning to learn and communicate online. Orienting students to the learning management system, the resources they will use in the online program, and online learning in general is crucial to their success in all online programs, and especially in an online doctorate, during which they are also expected to work independently at a distance from campus.

The Admission Process

We have found the admission process to be one of the most important components of offering an online professional doctorate. It is imperative that the individuals accepted into the program understand the goal of becoming researching professionals and have a desire to achieve it. It is also important that they understand and are able to adhere to all requirements of the program, including active participation in the online community and in on-campus experiences. We therefore recommend that faculty offering online professional doctorates put considerable effort into the admission process. Indeed, the process needs to be one “that treats people fairly, does not create a burdensome system for applicants or those involved in the selection process, and ensures the selection of a solid foundation of high quality candidates with whom faculty can mentor, who add value to the program, and who can benefit from the program” (Perkins & Lowenthal, 2014, p. 27).

A recent informal review of the admission processes at seventeen institutions offering online doctoral programs in fields related to educational technology found great variability in admission requirements, from a minimal application process including online reference and official transcripts to more rigorous and thorough processes involving statements of purpose, writing samples, letters of recommendations, and CVs (Perkins & Lowenthal, 2014). Our admission process leans toward the more rigorous and thorough end of this continuum, since our doctoral applicants provide transcripts, GRE scores, letters of recommendation and writing samples, and a purpose statement that explains how the online professional doctorate will help them meet their career goals and what it is about the program that intrigues them. We also require them to submit a letter of agreement stating that they understand and are willing to comply with the requirements of participating in the online community and attending all campus-based sessions.

All program faculty review completed applications. Since there are always more applications than slots in the cohort, we begin by whittling down the pool to those who seem like potential candidates. It is generally easy to identify people who are applying to the program because they think online degrees are easy to obtain, those who did not take the time to carefully consider how their career goals align with the goals of the program, and those who are not particularly invested in becoming researching professionals. And, of course, there are those applications that cannot even be considered because they do not meet the university requirements.

Rather than ask potential candidates to submit videos addressing certain questions or issues, as some institutions do (Perkins & Lowenthal, 2014), we schedule telephone interviews with the pool of potential candidates. Regardless of the process employed, we recommend that faculty get to know potential candidates beyond the required application packet. Although this is time consuming for faculty, we have found that these efforts monumentally increase the likelihood of having a successful cohort of students who reach the goal of our program—to become researching professionals.

We try to schedule back-to-back telephone interviews, typically on a weekend, so that we can carefully consider each applicant alongside the others. We ask questions about why they are applying to the program, how they are currently engaged in their profession, and what types of reading they do within it. We have found that individuals who are already engaged in their field and reading within it are more likely to succeed at becoming researching professionals. We also ask questions about their practice, including what they might like to study within it and whether they are likely to have the support needed to conduct research in their contexts. As we have learned through the experiences of some of our students, it is very difficult to merge theory, research, and practice if research cannot be conducted within the student’s practice. We also allow time for the potential student to ask us questions. We have found that this interview process enables us to select individuals for whom the program is likely to be a good fit.

Design of On-Campus Experiences

We did not meet on campus with our first cohort until after their first academic year of coursework. This on-campus experience proved very fruitful, and a stronger community was clearly evident by the end of the week, as evidenced by both increased traffic in the online community from that point forward and feedback from students (Kenney et al., 2013). Others have also written about the importance of on-campus experiences during online doctoral programs (Jones, Warren, Ennis-Cole, Knezek, Lin, & Norris, 2014; Adams et al., 2014).

We recommend considering carefully the on-campus experiences associated with online professional doctorates. While our department offers completely online MEd and EdS programs that work quite well without on-campus experiences, we have found such experiences to be an important component of our model for online professional doctorates. We carefully integrate the online coursework, online community, and campus-based experiences to accomplish the goal of preparing researching professionals who can merge theory, research, and practice.

Each cohort in our program is now required to attend a two-day on-campus orientation before the beginning of the first academic year. We use this orientation for students to get to know each other and the faculty; to plan their online community structure; to become familiar with basic university procedures, including the library system; to meet administrators; to secure their university ID numbers, which are essential to all university processes from registration to graduation; and to tour the campus and see the surrounding area.

The second time students visit the campus is for four days after their first academic year is complete. We build on things learned during the year; provide scaffolds to further develop online community; provide opportunities for them to practice scholarly presentation skills; and prepare them for what is coming during the second year, such as an increased emphasis on academic writing, an increased expectation to use library resources effectively, and an expectation to understand university policies related to research (i.e., Institutional Review Board policies). We also explain the qualifying exam process, which will culminate during the on-campus experience after the second year of coursework.

The third on-campus experience involves the oral qualifying exam process. (Written exams are submitted a couple of months before the on-campus experience.) If students pass their qualifying exams, which 90 percent of them do, they advance to doctoral candidacy. The dissertation mentoring process also begins during this time, with students meeting individually and as a group with their dissertation mentors.

During the third or fourth year of the program, depending on their timetable, students come to campus for their dissertation defence. Whenever possible, students also come to campus for the dissertation proposal meeting. The final time that most students are on campus is for their graduation, when cohort members can celebrate with each other at the formal ceremony as well as at an informal gathering that we host for them before the ceremony.

Communication with Students

Consistent and reliable communication with students is essential within our model for online professional doctorates. We begin this communication by having a well-maintained website where potential students can learn about our program, see dissertation titles and current positions of graduates, and read open-source articles published about the program (http://education.ufl.edu/edtech-edd/). We also have an email address dedicated to inquiries about the admission process.

The program coordinator serves as the first line of communication for those seeking admission and for students already enrolled. She sends regular messages to all students. Individual faculty members communicate with students about the specifics of coursework, but all informational items about the program, such as dates for synchronous sessions and university deadlines, come from the program coordinator and are copied to the other faculty members. Other programs offering online professional doctorates may find a different arrangement more suitable, but considering how to consistently and reliably communicate with students is vital to the success of any program.

Distinctions Between Program Advising and Dissertation Mentoring

Good communication is a crucial part of the relationship between student and adviser in all doctoral education (Gardner, 2007; Zhao, Golde & McCormick, 2007), but it is even more critical in online doctoral programs, especially in terms of the consistency of communication that students receive from their advisers (Kumar & Dawson, 2012a). In fact, issues related to advising can challenge both students and faculty within online programs (Exter, Korkmaz, & Boling, 2014).

In our program, the full-time faculty member serving as program coordinator functions as the program adviser for all students until they become doctoral candidates after passing qualifying exams, at which point they begin working with their dissertation mentors. The program coordinator addresses issues such as programs of study, transfer credits, and elective courses. The cohort nature of our model makes these tasks very similar among students, and we strive to take care of as many of these issues as possible during the on-campus orientation session. However, individual differences arise, especially in terms of transfer credits and electives, and the program coordinator handles those issues. Having one person serve as the program adviser for the entire cohort helps streamline the process and ensure accuracy. Once students pass qualifying exams, they begin to work with their dissertation mentors. Distinguishing between advising and mentoring is a strategy employed by other online doctorates as well (Exter, Korkmaz, & Boling, 2014).

Online Spaces to Support Community

An online community is an essential component of our model for online professional doctorates. Community is most frequently viewed through the lens of individual courses; however, we encourage those offering online professional doctorates to consider establishing online spaces that transcend coursework. We have explored numerous mechanisms for achieving this, from a tool developed in our college to commercial products such as Google Groups and Facebook. Through these various attempts, we have come to believe that the tool is not as important as the concept, since the many tools available to support online community tend to have similar features. The more important issue is understanding the importance of community, establishing broad expectations for what should occur in the community, and scaffolding students to take ownership of their own communities over time. During the on-campus orientation, for example, we put students in charge of choosing the tool they will use for their community, and throughout the first year, we set up activities that gradually shift control of the community from faculty to students.

Courses Specific to the Online Doctorate

Our Ed Tech program offers multiple degrees and sometimes the same course is required across degrees. For example, Foundations of Educational Technology is a course required by all five of our degrees (PhD, EdD, MAE, MEd, and EdS). However, we have found that offering courses specific to the online professional doctorate is helpful for several reasons. First, it helps establish community among students. Second, it enables the instructor to modify course content and assignments to meet the specific needs of researching professionals (including activities related to developing scholarly thinking) and to fit within the unique course sequence of the degree. Third, it helps with administrative issues such as planning for staffing and registration. This is not to say that every course should be specific to the online program. Our students choose electives from a variety of courses, which gives them an opportunity to interact with those outside the program and enables individualization during the program. We have carefully selected the courses we believe are best suited as program-specific courses, and each faculty member in the program teaches one of them. This enables faculty and students to get to know one another on a deeper level.

While we recommend that other program leaders consider including program-specific courses in their design of an online professional doctorate, institutions organize courses in online doctoral programs in multiple ways. For example, some employ a distributed model in which existing doctoral courses are transitioned to an online format to accommodate off-campus students (Jones et al., 2014); a small-group hybrid model, whereby groups of students at different locations meet synchronously with a professor who is alone in an on-campus studio; or a shared-portal model, whereby online students access a face-to-face class on campus synchronously via video-conferencing technology (Henriksen et al., 2014).

Research Courses Appropriate for Researching Professionals

One of the biggest challenges we have had in terms of coursework in our program is finding ways to offer research courses appropriate to a professional doctorate, an issue that is not unique to our program (Marsh, Dembo, Gallagher, & Stowe, 2010). In fact, many professional doctorates still have research requirements aligned to those of PhD programs, although concerted efforts are underway to make such courses more practical to match the goals of professional doctorates (Bengston, Jones, Lasater, & Murphy-Lee, n.d.). The challenge of offering appropriate research courses for professional doctorates is often magnified when the program is online (Adams et al., 2014; Dawson, Cavanaugh, Sessums, Black, & Kumar, 2011).

Within our context, we have had to address challenges at both policy and instructional levels. At the policy level, our college has a set of research requirements for doctoral students. The policy was developed for on-campus PhD students and requires that all the research courses be taught on campus through the research and evaluation program in our college. We had to work through faculty governance channels to modify the policy to include online courses for researching professionals. As with most changes in faculty policies, this was challenging and was not met with enthusiasm by all faculty members—particularly those not supportive of online education in general or those who believe the research doctorate is only one kind of doctoral degree our college should offer.

Once the policy change was approved, we worked at the instructional level to help those teaching the courses to better understand the needs of researching professionals. Although there was interest in developing courses to meet the needs of our students, there was a disconnect between our understanding of the research methodology field and their understanding of researching professionals and of teaching online. This disconnect has been reported at other institutions as well (Baldwin, 2015; Bengston et al., n.d.).

Because the online courses offered within the program did not receive adequate support, issues of faculty availability arose. These courses continue to be a challenge, and we continue to work with our colleagues who are teaching them. Although institutions without policies about research courses may experience fewer challenges, determining what research courses for researching professionals should look like is difficult regardless of institutional policies. Similarly, regardless of institutional policies, we believe it is important to engage with colleagues in research and evaluation programs to ensure that the research courses align with the needs of researching professionals. In our view, these courses should be rigorous; include qualitative, quantitative, and mixed methods that can address a range of problems of practice; provide students with opportunities to work with both predetermined data sets and with data sets from their own unique contexts; enable students to conduct independent research during their dissertations and as researching professionals following graduation.

FACULTY ENGAGEMENT

Faculty engagement is a crucial component of a quality online programs; however, a gap frequently exists between an institutional aspiration to grow online programs and the level of faculty engagement (Seaman, 2009). Low levels of faculty engagement relate to a number of factors, including a perception that the time commitment involved extends far beyond offering classes on campus, a lack of institutional support and incentives to offer online courses, and a belief that online courses are inferior to campus-based courses (Seaman, 2009). However, it is likely that readers of this book fall into the growing percentage of faculty members and other higher-educational employees who are becoming engaged in online teaching and learning in order to meet students’ needs through flexible access and reach students who don’t have access to traditional campus-based classes and programs. For this reason, we do not address issues associated with faculty acceptance and adoption of online learning here. Instead, we focus on faculty considerations that are particularly pertinent to offering online professional doctorates.

Developing and Maintaining Collaboration and Cohesiveness

The traditional notion of faculty operating in isolation has been deteriorating for some time now (Gappa, Austin, & Trice, 2007), and “successful online learning programs usually operate across a wide range of academic and administrative units, which in many ways run counter to the traditional, often ‘siloed,’ manner in which campuses conduct business and teach students” (McCarthy & Samors, 2009, p. 13). Even so, we believe that the importance of collaborative and cohesive faculty is magnified in our model for online professional doctorates because students move through the program as a cohort and because the various aspects of and courses within the program are interwoven with each other and with the theoretical foundations on which they are built. Not only does the cohort structure open up excellent opportunities for students to develop online community, but it also enables students to share every detail about their program experience with each other, including feedback and conversations with faculty. If faculty members are not on the same page in terms of program expectations, the student experience can be confusing or, even worse, feel inequitable. This is not to suggest that faculty members become clones of each other but rather that faculty members’ understanding and support of the program design, implementation, and evaluation is essential.

We have developed and maintained the collaborative culture among faculty in the online professional doctorate through regular meetings about the program and through collaborative research related to the program, which often guides conversations during our meetings. While these meetings do not always bring about unanimous agreement, decisions are made with collegiality and respect, enabling us to continue fostering a collaborative culture.

If a culture of collaboration and cohesiveness already exists among the program faculty, it must be consciously maintained during the design and implementation of an online professional doctorate. If these qualities do not already exist, it is critical to develop them before offering such a program, and if they are unattainable, faculty should carefully consider whether offering an online professional doctorate using our model will work for them.

Diversity of Faculty Experiences

In an ideal world, faculty working within an online professional doctorate would have a range of experiences beyond academia in order to support the purpose of the degree—to merge theory, research, and practice to prepare researching professionals. Our faculty have professional experiences that include K-12 teaching, instructional design for corporate and postsecondary settings, postsecondary distance education, faculty support services, and international education. Each of these experiences beyond the professorial role helps us to better advise, mentor, and understand our professional students. While it is not always possible to hire individuals specifically for one degree (we offer five different degrees in our Educational Technology program and we each work across all programs), we recommend taking into consideration the needs of professional students when hiring new faculty and compiling a faculty team with as much experiential diversity as possible.

Program Coordination and Leadership

Each member of our program team is committed to and supports the design, implementation, and evaluation of our online professional doctorate. However, having a program coordinator or someone who champions the program has been instrumental to its success and continual evolution. During the early years of our program, the program was more or less run by committee, with each faculty member supporting it in different ways at different times. This was a difficult configuration to sustain, because no one had direct responsibility for the program. During the second cohort, we hired a faculty member whose main assignment is to coordinate and lead the online professional doctorate. This program coordinator oversees all aspects of the program; contributes to the collaborative culture discussed above by engaging the faculty in meaningful conversations, planning meetings, and decision making; and leads the research and evaluation efforts related to the program.

It is important to note that this person is a full-time faculty member, not an adjunct or administrative assistant (although we discuss the need for such a person later in this chapter). We recommend that those starting an online professional doctorate take a similar approach to program leadership. A full-time faculty member can be fully invested in the program and is considered a colleague by those outside the program, which enhances efforts to gain support for the program from those outside the discipline.

Support for the Program Among Faculty Members

Faculty members with online teaching experience tend to have much more positive views of online education than those who have never personally engaged with it (Seaman, 2009). However, even in institutions like ours, where the majority of faculty accept online learning, an online professional doctorate may be a novelty. This makes it very important to share information about the program and to garner support and a positive reputation among colleagues. We did this through presentations at faculty meetings, publications shared with colleagues, and informal workplace conversations. As discussed earlier, our relationship with the CTTE program also helped here.

Most of our colleagues are supportive of our program, although a few either do not understand or do not support a doctoral degree that is anything but a traditional research PhD. Others (albeit a shrinking number) still do not support online learning despite its prominence in higher education. We suspect there will always be colleagues with these views, and the best we can do is to respect their views and continue to offer a quality program.

While collegial support is critical to maintaining a healthy workplace culture, at our institution, it is also essential that colleagues outside the program area be willing to participate in the online professional doctorate because all doctoral dissertation committees must have three members from within our department and one external member, someone within our college but outside our department. Other institutions offering online professional doctorates may have similar policies related to dissertation committees.

When the program began, we recruited student-centred colleagues who we felt understood and supported the goals of our program to participate on committees. Because our professional students do not reside on campus, their dissertation adviser selects their committee members based not only on the student’s work context and research interests but also on the potential committee member’s understanding of and skill with working with online students. Students are able to review faculty profiles and make requests for certain faculty members if they wish. Given that even on-campus doctoral students often struggle to compile a committee that is able to provide the needed expertise (Roberts, 2010), this approach seems particularly appropriate for online students.

The committee members evaluate written qualifying exams, attend the oral qualifying exam, provide feedback on the dissertation prospectus, and attend the dissertation proposal meeting and the dissertation defence. The oral qualifying exam process occurs during the break week between Summer A and Summer B, which often does not allow our colleagues who teach in both sessions to participate on committees. We discuss the associated workload issues for these colleagues later in the chapter.

INSTITUTIONAL AND PROGRAM SUPPORT SYSTEMS

“Online learning programs succeed with consistent and adequate academic, administrative, and technological resources for faculty and students” (McCarthy & Samors, 2009, p. 5), and a perceived lack of support is one of the main reasons faculty shy away from online teaching and learning. Support varies across contexts but typically involves central information-technology support; a technological infrastructure that includes a standard learning-management system, instructional design and technical support for course development; and implementation and student support services. These support systems must be in place before discussions about offering online professional doctorates can happen. However, despite the fact that our institution does offer support for online education at the university and college levels, we have discovered areas in which support needs related to our online professional doctorate need to be reconsidered.

Faculty Workload

Not surprisingly, faculty workload is a major issue for online teaching and learning in general and is magnified for online professional doctorates. The biggest challenges that we have faced in this regard relate to the on-campus experiences, the qualifying exam and dissertation processes, and the involvement of colleagues outside our program.

The on-campus experiences present numerous challenges. During the regular semester, for example, faculty simply do not have the time needed to participate fully with the cohort, and parking for off-campus students cannot be secured. Thus, we hold the on-campus experiences during the break week between the Summer A and Summer B sessions, when faculty, in theory, are available and parking is plentiful. However, currently faculty are not compensated for the time spent with the on-campus experiences over break week. The third on-campus experience takes place when the cohort takes the oral portion of qualifying exams, which means we need to find many colleagues, sometimes a dozen or more, who are willing to devote their summer break week to sitting in on oral exams; this, of course, involves reading the written exams in advance. These same colleagues must commit to reading a dissertation prospectus and proposal and to attending a dissertation proposal meeting and defence later in the process. Our college provides no compensation to these individuals for their generous support of students. In fact, we fear that as we admit more cohorts and as our college offers more online doctoral programs, we will find it much more difficult to recruit individuals willing to make these commitments without appropriate compensation—compensation that is limited due to our university’s policies.

Even if our program faculty members and other committee members received appropriate compensation, the workload would still be intense. Mentoring students through a dissertation takes a great deal of time and mental and emotional effort. Given the cohort nature of our program, students tend to move through the qualifying exam and dissertation processes at similar times, so each faculty member in our program could be mentoring six researching professionals through the dissertation process while simultaneously working with a few students from previous cohorts who are behind schedule and mentoring PhD dissertations, MAE theses, and MEd and EdS culminating projects. And, of course, this work occurs in tandem with other faculty requirements such as teaching courses, conducting research, and providing service to the college and university and the faculty member’s profession. We know of programs in which individuals have been hired specifically to mentor students during the dissertation stage and of some in which the dissertation requirements have been modified to make the workload more manageable for faculty. We are interested in the impact these decisions have on the quality of program and look forward to reading about how such strategies work for others when that information becomes available. In the meantime, we consider it important to work with administrators to address these issues adequately. Since designing our program has been an iterative process over eight years, we only became cognizant of faculty workload issues as they arose during that period. If we were to begin our program again with the knowledge we have gained, we would address issues of faculty workload before starting the program, and we encourage others to do just that.

Support for Faculty Members Teaching in the Program

Although our educational technology faculty members had extensive experience with online teaching and learning before we began the online professional doctorate, many of our colleagues who teach in the program did not. We provided support to these colleagues by helping them understand the goals of our program and how their courses fit within the larger program design. These colleagues also received support from a faculty support office in our college, and all courses ended up being designed according to the quality indicators adopted by our institution. However, a quality course design does not always lead to quality implementation. Faculty members have varying abilities to adapt to the new challenges of teaching online courses and to understand the goal of merging theory, research, and practice to develop researching professionals.

Whenever possible, we carefully select who teaches in the program, but we do not always have direct control of these choices. Regardless of how these decisions are made, we recommend taking the time to help faculty members understand the unique nature and purpose of an online professional doctorate and how their course fits into the larger design of the program. Existing personnel in an institution for online course development (e.g., instructional designers, media specialists) can provide valuable assistance with the development of individual courses. We also recommend learning as much as possible from instructors about what they consider the key features and content of their course. A professional and collaborative relationship with faculty members outside the program helps them to realize how important their course is to our program and how much we value its content, and it also tends to result in continual efforts to improve the courses.

Administrative and Student Support Needs

Despite the fact that support is essential to online initiatives, it is an area where many institutions fall short, which is one of the reasons why faculty members have negative perceptions of online teaching and learning. Like the other issues mentioned in this chapter, support issues are magnified in online professional doctorates and require additional considerations (Exter et al., 2014; Kumar & Dawson, 2012a).

In an ideal world, we would have a staff member dedicated to our program whom we could explicitly train to understand the needs of students in our various degree programs and especially those of our online doctoral students. However, in most institutions, this is simply not feasible. We have a generic student support centre and a staff person assigned to the program for a couple of hours a week to help with some of the administrative aspects of the program; however, much of the support work still falls to the program coordinator, since online professional doctoral students often need different types and levels of support than is typically provided by the administrative and support staff in our college.

For example, the program coordinator works directly with our student services office to ensure that the cohort courses are offered at the appropriate times and that the right students are enrolled in them. At certain points during the program, this person also has a reduced teaching load to compensate for the many responsibilities associated with this role. The program coordinator also deals with all student inquiries about the program; the student communication and program advising mentioned above; the admission process, including coordinating application reviews and setting up interviews; and the formation of dissertation committees, coordination of the written qualifying exams, and scheduling of oral exams. While most of these duties could feasibly be done by administrative or student support personnel, these employees have neither expertise about our program nor the allocated time to learn about the program and work on these tasks. The reduced teaching load helps the program coordinator in terms of providing time to offer administrative and student support services, which is helpful but not ideal, as her time could be better spent on work that is more aligned with her faculty expertise and on continually improving the program. We recommend, if at all possible, that others offering an online professional doctorate obtain a staff person who is assigned exclusively to the role of program assistant.

Strong Relationships with Support Personnel

At various times in our program, we work closely with different individuals in our institution. During admissions, qualifying exams, and dissertation work, we help our department’s coordinator of graduate studies and his staff with planning efficiently for the increased workload that comes during these times. During registration, we liaise with our student support services centre, since, as mentioned earlier, they have neither adequate staff nor expertise to support our students on their own. At certain times, we interface with our Institutional Review Board, particularly as related to international dissertations; with the library staff and the finance department; and even with our university’s housing department, to provide the most economical options for our students during their campus visits. Determining areas outside of the program that will impact an online professional doctorate and forging positive working relationships with employees in these areas is essential.

CONCLUSION

Offering any online program involves the use of innovative methods of teaching and learning that require “the support of technologists, the engagement and expertise of academics, the interest of students, and a strategic and financial commitment at every level of the organization” (McCarthy & Samors, 2009, p. 13). Not surprisingly, institutions have varying levels of readiness for and success with online learning initiatives. Those initiatives are most likely to be successful in the presence of a clear institutional vision, a strategic plan, effective organizational structures, a sustainable funding model, and strong leaders with effective communication skills. However, online professional doctorates require considerations beyond basic infrastructure and support for online learning, and it is incumbent upon faculty members designing these programs to be cognizant of these considerations. Our online professional doctorate is constantly evolving, and we certainly have not figured everything out, but we hope that what we have learned through our experiences and research and have shared in this book provides insights that are useful to others. We welcome the opportunity to dialogue with others about how their own programs compare with the model presented in this book.

1 “Best Online Graduate Education Programs,” U.S. News and World Report, 2017, http://www.usnews.com/education/online-education/education/search?school-name=university+of+florida.