Faculty play crucial yet understudied roles in diversifying the professoriate. Rates of diversification across the pipeline to the professoriate have moved slowly. Guided by directed content analysis, this qualitative study uses data from interviews with 74 faculty at five different California State University institutions and explores the…

It is unknown if matching students' preferred learning style with course delivery style improves academic success and further study is warranted in this area (Feely & Biggerstaff, 2017; Newton & Miah, 2017). Recently, there has been a call to better identify and understand the preferred learning styles of physical therapy education…

This research pioneered the investigation of the role of doctoral students' thinking styles in their program satisfaction and perceived intellectual competence. Participants were 285 STEM (science, technology, engineering, mathematics) students in Hong Kong. Results showed that students' thinking styles as measured by the Thinking Styles…

Doctoral studies are about learning to create new knowledge and to become a researcher. Yet surprisingly little is known about the individual learning patterns of doctoral students. The study aims to explore learning patterns among natural science doctoral students. The participants included 19 doctoral students from a top-level natural science…

Background: In the fields of science and engineering, Chinese students earned the largest number of doctorate degrees among foreign students in U.S. institutions from 1989 to 2009. Although prior studies have explored Chinese students' adjustment issues in U.S. institutions, such as language capabilities, socialization, and learning experiences,…

This article examines Active Engagement, Active Communication, and Peer Engagement learning practices among various student groups. It examines which tools are most important for increasing student satisfaction with web-based and web-enhanced instruction. Second, it looks at how different tools lead to greater satisfaction among different types of…

The doctoral viva voce examination has existed in Britain since the PhD (or DPhil) was introduced at Oxford University almost a hundred years ago. However, despite some recent research studies, it seems that the viva remains somewhat under-researched and that viva voce examinations continue to take place according to largely unchanged and…

"Scholar-Craftsmanship" (SC) is a quadrant methodological framework created to help social science doctoral students construct first-time dissertation research. The framework brackets and predicts how epistemological domains, cultures of inquiries, personality indicators, and research question--types can be correlated in dissertation…

For the last few decades, Australia has played a pivotal role in the supply of quality education to international students and other educational industries associated with them. In the higher education sector, in particular, international PhD student numbers continue to increase. However, the limited availability of resources for the students and…

A Learning Contract can be understood as an approach in teaching where students are viewed as lifelong learners. It aims to develop students' self-directedness and control of their own learning experience. The purpose of this paper is to critically reflect on the Learning Contract used in Directed Studies courses for graduate students. The author…

As part of their journey of learning to research, doctoral candidates need to become members of their research community. In part, this involves coming to be aware of their field in ways that are shared amongst longer-term members of the research community. One aspect of candidates' experience we need to understand, therefore, involves how they…

Online higher education professors may find their teaching approaches conflict with the learning preferences of their globally dispersed students, which can impede academic performance. In this empirical study of 254 international doctorate students (across 23 cultures), a model was developed to assess how learning expectations affected…

Describes a study that tracked doctoral students during the coursework phase in a Web-based learning environment. Explains the use of Kolb's Learning Style Inventory to test the hypothesis that learning style would predict completion of the required courses and suggests implications for future research. (Author/LRW)

Thirteen Ph.D. students took part in interviews focussed on the nature of their own learning of mathematics. In analysing these interviews an unexpected category emerged concerning the students' awareness of others as having particular types of learning goal. In this paper we explore the three levels which we discerned within this category and…

Presents a qualitative multiple-case study of three online asynchronous computer conferences that were part of a doctoral program at Nova Southeastern University. Examines the learning process from the points of view of interaction, cognition, and discourse analysis and proposes a model for assessing sociocognitive processes in computer…