In 2008, the Carnegie Initiative on the Doctorate (CID) presented research on how to help doctoral students thrive and successfully transition into higher education roles. The CID reported that doctoral students often left programs that were using an expert-apprentice model, where students are expected to strictly follow the methods and style of…

Building community in online EdD programs can be a challenge, and the COVID-19 pandemic has highlighted the importance of doing so. In this essay, we will situate community building within the larger Community of Inquiry framework and focus on the element of social presence. By understanding more about the various aspects of social presence,…

The transactional distance created by asynchronous online course formats poses unique challenges to the development of a collaborative learning environment. The lack of face-to-face interaction also challenges instructors' ability to make adaptive changes to course content in response to emerging student needs. The authors describe a professor's…

This essay serves as the narrative of an early career Assistant Professor as they recall their struggles, vulnerabilities, and insecurities while navigating the need to shift their educational leadership doctoral students to emergency remote learning amid a global pandemic. Using the foundations of transformational experiences for adult learners,…

Action learning is seen under many guises, being adapted into different contexts (Marsick and O'Neil [1999. "The Many Faces of Action Learning." "Management Learning" 30 (2): 159-176.]). This is especially true in higher education, due to the divergent requirements and challenges of multiple action learning programmes and…

In this essay, we have described how we build and sustain community in our online EdD program. Initially, we discussed our understanding of community and its influence on our efforts. Then, we discussed three important theoretical frameworks--Wenger's Community of Practice, Garrison et al.'s Community of Inquiry, and Morris and Stommel's Critical…

A sense of disillusionment grips many doctoral students as they face financial distress, lack of adequate mentorship, concern about job prospects, and other challenges. The Old Testament book of Malachi is a little-recognized resource for students struggling with feelings of disillusionment. Malachi's audience faced disappointment after joyfully…

Completing a PhD is difficult. Add a major earthquake sequence and general stress levels become much higher. Caring for some of the nonacademic needs of doctoral scholars in this environment becomes critical to their scholarly success. Yet academic supervisors, who are in the same challenging environment, may already be stretched to capacity. How…

This article reports on the program changes that emerged from the Baylor University Ed.D. in Learning and Organizational Change program development team as we engaged as a community of practice in the organizational change process to reframe our conceptualization of the Problem of Practice dissertation. This process led to logical implications for…

This paper seeks to offer insights and gentle suggestions for higher education leaders, particularly those teaching and supervising new doctoral students. Graduate students experience stress and anxiety, making entering the academic sphere an often emotionally taxing move. In response, a great deal of research examines how university faculty might…

The essay describes how a task team of Drexel EdD faculty worked as a community of practice (Wenger, 1998) to conduct a crosswalk to align program principles, known as the Keystones, with national and university standards including the six Guiding Principles for Program Design contained in the CPED Framework (Carnegie Project on the Education…

With the growing number of online students, universities must provide support for students in developmental education to engage, collaborate, and co-construct their learning in socially dynamic ways. Online learning communities provide spaces for students to identify with others, communicate openly and candidly, and develop professional…

This article describes a year-long doctoral course on ethnographic case study research in which a communities of practice approach helped non-traditional students manage the challenging identity negotiations of entering a new academic field. Co-taught by faculty in two disciplines--Rhetoric and Composition and Teaching, Learning, and Culture--the…

The purpose of this manuscript is to present strategies and resources for advisors of doctoral students in online programs. The strategies include an approach to creating a community of doctoral students, a video initiative to provide encouragement to students in the doctoral program, and assignments that enhance students' writing skills to…

The authors' lived experience of devising a professional development programme for research supervisors and securing SEDA (Staff and Educational Development Association) accreditation informs this paper. Our first purpose is to outline the programme and discuss its uniqueness in using a community of practice model in conjunction with practitioner…