Strategies to Assist Distance Doctoral Students in Completing Their Dissertations

My colleagues and I recently published an article on distance doctoral students in The International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning. It’s a Field Notes article, with practices from our experience shared.

Lim, J., Covrig, D., Freed, S., De Oliveira, B., Ongo , M., & Newman, I. (2019). Strategies to assist distance doctoral students in completing their dissertationsThe International Review of Research in Open and Distributed Learning20(5), 192-210. https://doi.org/10.19173/irrodl.v20i5.4532

Strategies for Three Goals

In the paper, we share strategies and technology tools that meet the following three goals:

  1. cultivate a shared culture of responsibility and commitment
    • a tool to discuss the distance doctoral student’s social network
    • teaching students how to manage their split life
    • a tool to evaluate the student’s readiness for the dissertation process
    • mapping out where dissertation skills are developed in the program
  2. increase effective communication between researchers
    • being available to students
    • giving effective feedback
    • generating trust
    • using humor
  3. grow departmental and institutional services and technologies for faculty and students
    1. the use of online and library resources
    2. campus-wide use of research software
    3. writing retreats
    4. departmental support for research

If these areas are of interest to you in supporting online doctoral students, I encourage you to take a look at our article. It’s open access, so please enjoy!

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