Two members of Noodle’s Learning team were published today in International Perspectives on Supporting and Engaging Online Learners (Innovations in Higher Education Teaching and Learning, Vol. 39). The work also marks Noodle’s VP of Student Affairs Jaimie Hoffman’s sixth edited volume.
The chapter, written by two of Noodle’s leading experts on online learning and student support, examines the factors contributing to online doctoral student success. Sundt and Wheaton draw from their extensive academic and professional experience to review the intersection of two student categories (online and doctoral) with historically low graduation rates.
Read the abstract below, and visit Emerald Publishing to learn more and read the full chapter.
Abstract:
What contributes to US professional doctoral student success in the online space is the subject of this chapter. The online doctoral student occupies two underserved categories of higher education students: doctoral students and online students, both of which have historically low graduation rates (Bawa, 2016; Stone, 2017). A number of US online doctoral programs have significantly higher graduation rates than normal, demonstrating that it is possible to create highly successful online doctoral programs. In this chapter, we apply th R. E. Clark and Estes (2008) conceptual framework of human performance to understanding the factors contributing to doctoral student success in online programs. We look at three stakeholder groups, faculty, staff, and students, and review the factors and solutions that could allow each group to contribute to doctoral student success. This review of the literature is informed by examples drawn from two online professional doctoral programs for which the authors either designed and taught courses, and chaired dissertations, or were enrolled in as a student.
