In my ongoing quest to provide useful information to the readers of Educational Pathways, I took an in-depth look at four doctoral programs in instructional design and/or educational technology that are taught at a distance, but not fully at a distance. These programs can be considered flexible enough to enable prospective students to earn a doctorate from their home base while maintaining their current employment. All four programs have some form of residency requirement. However, these residencies can typically be scheduled at convenient intervals of time, which, for the most part, can fit inside a working adult’s busy life without a disastrous disruption of one’s employment status (provided, of course, that you work within an administration that is understanding and willing to support such an educational endeavor).

The four doctoral programs, in alphabetical order by institution, are:

Tina Stavredes, faculty director of Instructional Technology and Performance Improvement at Capella University, explains that Capella’s doctoral program in Instructional Design for Online Learning (IDOL) started in the 1999/2000 academic year and currently enrolls 232 students. The mix of students is about 50 percent from higher education jobs and 50 percent from corporate sectors. "Having two different worlds enrolled in the program brings diversified perspectives that are applied to the theories that learners are researching and analyzing," Stavredes says. "The majority of our learners say that they gain more knowledge from having such a mix."

The fist mandatory course in the IDOL program is called ED8004 Societal and Cultural Change, and there’s more to this course than what the title reveals. As noted in Capella’s online course description, ED8004 covers "the research, dynamics and theories relating to the ways in which societies and cultures evolve and change." Plus this course has a writing rubric, a computer skills rubric, and a concurrent "Learner Success Lab."

"We implemented this first course to get learners acclimated to the online environment," says Stavredes, adding that there is a strong emphasis in diagnosing learners’ current writing skills and preparing them to succeed in the preparation and composition of their comprehensive examinations and dissertations.

Another prerequisite course is ED851 Principles of Learning and Instructional Design. ED851 is "an introduction to the discipline of instructional design, which is concerned with the systematic and reflective process of translating learning challenges and principles of learning and instruction into learning solutions that include plans for instructional materials, activities, information resources, and evaluation (Smith & Ragan, 1999)."

"We ask learners to take these courses before they get into courses like ED7211 Designing Online Instruction, where they are doing storyboarding," Stavredes says. The goal is to build the appropriate foundation for learners to gain the skills and knowledge they need for applying instructional design in online environments. Ideas and concepts covering such issues as leadership and ethics are also covered before moving into comprehensive examinations and the dissertation process.

Courses run for 12 weeks, are grounded in discussion, and are typically project-based. "Many of the learners bring in work projects," says Stavredes. "We want to make sure they can apply what they are learning directly to their jobs." ED724 Project Management, for instance, takes learners from start to finish in the production of an online learning project management/plan document, covering such project elements as who the stakeholders are, what the issues are, as well as the creation of timelines, schedules and resources. "I can’t think of one example where a learner did not bring in something that they were doing inside their work environment," she adds.

In between quarterly coursework, learners must attend three week-long "Residential Colloquia," divided into three tracks and held once each year, in various locations across the U.S., during specific program milestones. The current schedule for the Ph.D. program had residencies slated every two months, moving from Virginia, to Arizona, to Georgia, to Illinois, to Washington, D.C, and to Florida.

Track 1 is taken before transferring in and completing 56 credits. Learners are strongly encouraged to complete this week within the first quarter of enrollment. "This is a really good time for learners to come in and get grounded, meet the faculty, meet the chair of the department, meet other learners and start to bond," says Stavredes. "They go to a lot of seminars that help them adjust to life online."

Track 2 is taken within 57-72 credits of coursework while learners are immersed in their core coursework. Here "we start moving the learners to more research-type courses."

Track 3 is taken between the completion of 73-96 credits. Since the final 24 credits earned in the doctoral program are tied to the completion of the comprehensive examinations and dissertation, Track 3 prepares learners for their comp questions, for completing their dissertation, and for life after graduation.

Similar to its learners, Capella’s faculty in IDOL are a mixed bag. "They come from business and higher education," Stavredes says. "We have some deans of distance education programs (from other institutions) that teach for us, plus a variety of instructors from other universities who teach these courses. In business, we have all levels, from instructional designers to managers of training.

"We are constantly taking the pulse of what’s going on and in what direction instructional design is going - where technology is moving and what the implications are."

The Ed.D program with a specialization in Instructional Technology and Distance Education (ITDE) offered by Nova Southeastern University has three primary elements that make it a top-notch program, says Michael Simonson, program professor of instructional technology and distance education: "We have great faculty; the curriculum, which is always being revised, is need-to-know in terms of instructional technology and distance education; and we have a pretty strong sense of credibility. We are no Harvard or even Florida State in terms of our national and international reputation, but we have a program that over six years has 500 graduates (rough estimate) and is highly respected in the profession." ITDE is part of the Fischler Graduate School of Education and Human Services, which is a Nova Southeastern branch campus based in North Miami Beach, Florida. Nova Southeastern’s main campus is located in Fort Lauderdale and is the largest private university in the state with more than 21,000 students.

Currently about 275 students are enrolled in the ITDE program, which started in 1996. The program is structured around clusters, or cohorts, comprised of anywhere from 20 to 30 students led by a coordinator, "who is like a homeroom teacher who stays with them through the entire 3-year program," which is a lock-step program consisting of 9 terms (three four-month study areas per year), Simonson says. The students matriculate through the entire program together. About half of the nine terms are taught totally at a distance with no face-to-face components. The other half are offered primarily at a distance but include a face-to-face component within each term that can consist of a long weekend on a Friday through Monday or a six-day stint from a Saturday through Thursday.

One of the nice perks of the Nova Southeastern program is that these short residencies are held in the warm climes of North Miami Beach, with students staying in beach-front hotels at discounted rates. However, there’s not too much time available for frolicking in the sand.

These residencies are held in August, October or March and are preceded by online instruction that is augmented by readings, chats and threaded discussions, says Simonson. "They will fly in on a Thursday evening, and we will have classes that go from 8:30 a.m. to 4:30 p.m. for three or four days. It is the kind of instruction that is best accomplished in a face-to-face environment, such as lab work covering video production and editing, where we actually produce some video in small groups and bring them back to video edit in a desktop environment. It’s all very intensive seven-and-a-half-hour days."

As aforementioned, the IDE program is divided up into three study areas, with each study area consisting of three distinct phases. In the first phase, students are required to do an extensive amount of reading and complete a significant assignment based on the readings. Students also participate in audio conferences in which goals and objectives are discussed between each other and with faculty. The second phase is the face-to-face instruction where students experience a variety of teaching styles and establish stronger connections with their colleagues and faculty. Before the end of the second phase, students begin to work on a major final project. During the third and final stage of a study area, work on the final project continues. Faculty and students continue to communicate via audio conferencing, e-mail, chat and threaded discussions, and they use these same technologies to present their final projects to faculty and fellow students.

"We come to distance education not from a technical stand point, but from an instructional stand point," says Simonson. "How do you design instruction, and how do you deliver it, and what are the learner’s needs? Students will learn enough about the technology so that they "can interface with the technical people. We give our people enough technical background - things like video production, things like television operation, things like the mechanics of computer utilization and operation networking and how the Internet works - so they can talk to the technical-support people. But the real emphasis is on the design of instruction and what are the best practices and what the literature and research says. They get their foot in both camps, which makes them strong in the job market."

Simonson adds that many of the students in the ITDE programs are from relatively small higher education institutions, holding jobs as assistant professors, education administrators, directors of distance learning programs or key employees inside extension departments. Others may come from state, county or city education agencies. A good number of students also come from the private sector where they might be directors of training or employees in the telemedicine sector, for example.

Faculty, who are mostly adjuncts, are "hand-picked from higher education institutions around the country and are identified as luminaries in the field," Simonson adds. "I like to think we have the best people in the country, with folks who are recognized in the field."

The University of Nebraska - Lincoln’s (UNL) graduate faculty of the Department of Teaching, Learning, & Teacher Education offers students the choice of the Ph.D. or the Ed.D in Administration, Curriculum, and Instruction in any of three doctoral specializations: Teaching, Curriculum, & Learning; Instructional Technology (IT); and Internet-Based Education (IBE). The locus here is on the IT and IBE programs. The IT specialization focuses on using technology as a learning tool in various education settings. The IBE specialization focuses on using the Internet as a platform for teaching and learning.

The differences between the IT and IBE programs are "nominal," says Professor David Brooks, who helped develop these programs and teaches graduate-level courses in technology both face-to-face and at a distance. Overall, Brooks explains that "we are trying to focus on learners and learning more than we are on the traditional technology issues." Brooks also says that there really is only a "nominal" difference between the Ed.D. and Ph.D. programs. "There used to be enormous differences, but those differences have vanished over the years."

According to UNL literature, people who should consider pursuing these programs are "school professionals who want to develop the expertise in a chosen area of emphasis in teaching and learning, become a specialist in using technology in teaching, and acquire the expertise to apply the Internet for educational purposes."

Both programs grew into offering Web-based courses from courses that have been delivered over the years both on campus and via satellite TV. The IT specialization has been offered on campus for more than 10 years. The IBE specialization has been offered on-campus for 2 years. About five months ago, both programs moved to distance deliveries using Internet technologies, so the number of students studying primarily online is small at this time.

"We have an array of courses," says Brooks. "We have changed our curriculum and rolled out new courses this fall. . . " He adds that UNL started offering IT and BTE courses in online modes of delivery "out of evolution. Our programs are all evolutionary. They are the next logical thing to try; it is not something we are doing because we are hard up for customers."

Brooks says that students within the IT and IBE programs "come from all over the map. Some come from an education background; some come from computer-science backgrounds; there are some people who are in industrial training programs and see this as a way of enhancing their skill set and move their careers along professionally as independent consultants or as employees with large companies."

On the education side, many of the students in the IT and IBE programs are middle school through high school teachers.

Not all IT and IBE doctoral coursework is available though distance technologies. All doctoral students are recommended to spend at least one term on campus as full-time students. Brooks says there are pluses and minuses to earning a doctoral degree traditionally and at a distance. In relation to the traditional face-to-face learning environment, "students learn a lot from chatting with each other when they are sitting down at a desk and when they go to seminars on campus that are directly related to their field. That is a very real advantage." On the other hand, in regard to distance education, "it is much less expensive for somebody to stay on a job and work for their Ph.D. while they keep that job. They don’t have to travel and they don’t have to take off for a year or two."

Finally, Brooks claims that much of the credibility of the UNL doctoral programs, in general, is based in the fact that UNL is a member of the Association of American Universities (AAU), an organization of 62 leading research and doctoral-degree granting universities in the United States and Canada.

It’s noted on the Web site of Walden University’s (WU) Ph.D. in Education with a specialization in Educational Technology (ET) that students in this program "will become highly skilled in course development and delivery using technology, integration of technology in the curriculum, cognition and technology-based instruction and the management of technology for improved learning. Graduates occupy positions as technology leaders at school and district levels, in colleges, universities and private enterprises, and serve in college and university teaching and research positions."

WU’s Faculty Chair, Doctoral Program in Education, Iris Yob, explains that first part of the ET program follows a course of action based on what are called "Core Knowledge Area Modules" (KAMs), and the next part of the program revolves around prescribed coursework that is specifically related to educational technology. The third part of the program deals with the dissertation process. Thirty-two credits of residency, which is close to 32 days, are also required. The average time to complete the total of 128 credits needed to earn this doctorate is three to four years.

WU’s Ph.D. in Education with a specialization in ET program started in September 1998 and currently enrolls 82 students. It has thus far graduated about 20 students.

All new students are required to attend a New Student Orientation Residency (NSOR) within 60 days after starting their program. The NSOR is held within a component of either a four-day, two-week or three-week residency stint, which are held throughout the year at locations across the U.S. The NSOR is comprised of two credit-bearing classes: 8001 Strategies for Success and 8002 Writing a Quality Knowledge Area Module Demonstration. Yob calls the NSOR a "serious introduction. . . We will identify students through this process whose writing is just not up to it. A lot of folks even if they have done a master’s degree haven’t had the demands of writing that a doctoral program will put on them. So, we have built a support service for students to help them with their particular writing projects. And it is not just learning in the abstract; it is looking at the writing they are doing and working on tutoring them through some of these processes."

Regarding the 32-credits of residency, in general, Yob explains that "we give students an on-the-ground university experience. There are group discussions, group presentations, colloquia, plenaries and seminars of various kinds. We find that the human connection is a very powerful experience for some students, and we spend a lot of time advising students one on one."

The Core KAMs process, which consists of three 14-credit online research seminars, has similarities to independent study courses at the doctorate level. "Students go through these at their own pace and they shape them according to their own interests," says Yob. "We have a general curriculum guide that helps them find their way through this, but the product that comes out of each student’s work is unique."

Core KAMs are broken down into three principle areas of study: Principles of Societal Development, Principles of Human Development, and Principles of Organizational and Social Systems. Each KAM has three parts organized in a way that takes students from theory to research to practice. Thus, KAMs begin with a section on relevant theories, where "students analyze theories," says Yob. The second part is on current research, "where they focus it down to something that is relevant to themselves." The third area of study is the project phase where students "actually take their knowledge and try to make it apply in some way to the real world. It may be in curriculum development; it may be in developing a series of workshops related to their findings for colleagues in the field; it may be preparing an article for publication - all kinds of things."

Students in the program come from elementary school right on up through adult education," says Yob. "We have some students in community-based learning environments, and they need technology [expertise] for that kind of work. We have IT people in schools and colleges, and we have classroom teachers in elementary school who want to do more with educational technology." Yob adds that students from the corporate sectors typically enroll in WU’s PH.D. in Education programs with specializations in either Knowledge Management or Learning Management. However these same students frequently enroll in some of the educational technology courses and put together a hybrid program that fits in with enhancing their job skills.