Keywords

Introduction

This chapter provides a brief overview of the development of online doctoral education, both its scholarship and practice, by reviewing relevant literature. Compared to the long establishment of doctoral education practice, which was begun in the 1800s or even compared to the emergence of distance education dates back to the 1900s, online doctoral education has a relatively short history that has arisen with the advancement of information and communications technologies (Kumar & Dawson, 2018). For example, Sunderland (2002) is one of the first articles that discussed the use of email communication in a distance doctoral program offered, by Lancaster University in the UK, to academics at Romanian universities in 1997 and 1998. Crossman (2005) also reported that email communication is an innovative pedagogical tool for distance learners in doctoral programs in Australian universities.

Online doctoral programs (ODP) began to emerge between the late 1990s and the early 2000s. In the USA, for example, Regent University set up a doctoral program in Leadership Studies in 1996, where “with the exception of three brief summer residencies, all courses are designed and delivered primarily using [computer-mediated communication] or asynchronous instruction via the Internet” (Grooms, 2003, p. 3). The first fully ODP in Nursing was established at Duquesne University in the USA in 1997 (Milstead & Nelson, 1998), followed by several UK ODPs, including one in Business Administration set up at the University of Northumbria in 2000 (Combe, 2005). Currently, there are 259 ODPs in the USA, 187 in the UK, and 596 around the globe (Studyportals, 2022, September).

Although the wide dissemination of the Internet technologies is often referred to as the main contributor to the emergence of online doctoral education, the rapid development of OPDs in their current form is closely interlocked with recent changes in general doctoral education practice (Kumar & Dawson, 2018). Thus, it would be helpful to understand those changes and related debates to the growth of online doctoral education in the literature. The changes in general doctoral education practices across the 1980s and 1990s can be conceptualized as three related phenomena: i) moving from a traditional knowledge-oriented doctorate to a training-based doctorate, ii) a decrease in traditional research students and an increase in researching professionals, and iii) a tightened public funding for doctoral studies with added pressure on improving student competition rates (Hockey, 1991).

These changes were not unique to the doctoral education context. Similar phenomena were observed across the higher education sector under the impact of neoliberalism and free-market fundamentalism (Giroux, 2014) and also noted in the open and distance education context (Lee, 2017). The idea of higher education as a public service began to be demolished, and subsequently, student fees, not only for campus-based programs but for distance programs, were rapidly increased or newly introduced in some countries (in the UK, for example). As doctoral studies were becoming an individual customer’s choice, those interested in earning a doctorate for self-promoting purposes in the competitive market space signed up for doctoral programs.

These nontraditional (and fee-paying) doctoral students demanded a new, more convenient, and flexible way of engaging with doctoral education as they want to pursue a doctorate while maintaining their professional status and other social responsibilities. Also, the radical shift in the subject and purpose of doctoral education – from elite and “bright” student production of new knowledge to nontraditional and often “under-prepared” student participation in research training (Lee & Danby, 2012) – mandated universities and research institutions to change their doctoral education practices or at least to come up with different types of doctorates. Against this societal and economic backdrop, ODPs emerged as an alternative approach to doctoral education that could meet the growing needs of the new doctoral student group. That is where the affordances of information and communications technologies came to realize and accelerate the required changes in general doctoral education.

The development of the “contemporary” formats of online doctoral education has been influenced and enabled by the complex interplay between a range of social, educational, and technological changes in recent years. Subsequently, those factors have underpinned the design of ODPs, shaping student experiences in those programs. Therefore, the nature of online doctoral education is multifaceted and complex (Lee, 2020a). This chapter seeks a deeper understanding of the development of online doctoral education by reviewing diverse contributing factors to its development identified in the published literature. The chapter also discusses how those factors have guided the design of specific ODPs concerned in the same literature. 47 journal articles were systematically selected and reviewed to write this chapter, which will be detailed in the following section.

Review Methods

This review employed a systematic scoping process (Arksey & O’Malley, 2005). The initial search was conducted on Scopus, the largest abstract and citation database of peer-reviewed literature (http://www.scopus.com/), using the following compound search terms:

(“online” OR “distance”) AND “doctor*” AND (“program*” OR “course*” OR “stud*”)

When conducted in March 2021 (without limiting the publication period), based on the title, abstract, and keyword of the literature, the initial search results included 1144 journal articles (written in English). Another search was undertaken on the Web of Science using the same search terms to ensure the completeness of the search outcomes. 623 journal articles were also included. All 1767 articles were imported to a reference management software, and 523 were excluded as duplicates.

The author screened the titles and abstracts based on the inclusion and exclusion criteria (Zawacki-Richter, Kerres, Bedenlier, Bond, & Buntins, 2020). To be included, filtered articles must demonstrate their focus on (i) an online doctoral program (the most part of the program should be conducted at a distance, except for a limited number of residentials), (ii) online pedagogical practice (rather than technological tools such as learning management systems), and (iii) an empirical case or existing doctoral program (rather than conceptual or theoretical discussions). That is, papers discussing doctoral students’ experiences in a single online course or module in face-to-face doctoral programs were excluded alongside conceptual papers, including literature review articles. In addition, recent papers discussing online doctoral education practice during the COVID-19 pandemic were excluded to maintain the focus of the review on the contributing factors to the development of online doctoral education in normal circumstances. For this first step of the filtering process, sensitivity rather than specificity was adopted. For example, when the titles and abstracts did not include complete information required for the selection decision, the articles were included rather than excluded.

As the above flow chart (Fig. 1) suggests, after the first screening of 1244 articles, 148 papers were included for full-text screening. After the second round of inclusion and exclusion exercise, 53 papers were finally selected for the present systematic review. Additional six articles were excluded to avoid reviewing multiple papers describing the same doctoral program, with one exception. Kumar, Dawson, Black, Cavanaugh, and Sessums (2011), Kumar, Ochoa, and Edwards (2012), and Kumar and Dawson (2013) were all included in the present review despite their duplicated focus on the same online doctoral program. It was because each paper discusses a distinct aspect of the program, such as a theoretical underpinning of the overall design of the program (Kumar et al., 2011), the design of the specific information literacy and library instruction of the program (Kumar et al., 2012), and the impact of the program on the broader educational sector (Kumar & Dawson, 2013). Three research questions have guided the review process:

  1. (i)

    What are the stated reasons for the development of online doctoral education?

  2. (ii)

    What are the stated pedagogical concerns about online doctoral programs?

  3. (iii)

    What are the stated theoretical approaches to conceptualizing online doctoral studies?

Fig. 1
figure 1

Systematic review flow chart

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Taking a grounded theory approach (Charmaz, 2014), I conducted an inductive thematic analysis of the selected 47 journal articles. More specifically, three steps of the coding process were employed as suggested by Corbin and Strauss (2014) – open coding, axial coding, and selective coding.

Firstly, I read through each article in print and highlighted sentences or paragraphs discussing the factors contributing to the development of online doctoral education, pedagogical problems observed in ODPs, and the theoretical underpinnings to design the programs. Abstracts were excluded from the coding since most statements in abstracts were repeated in the main texts. The literature review section of each article was also excluded since statements appearing in the section are often not aligned with the authors’ broader arguments nor relevant to the particular doctoral programs concerned. Thus, coding and reading those statements in a decontextualized manner may reduce the accuracy and validity of the coding results. However, there were some exceptions. For example, Provident et al. (2015) utilize the literature review section to present their theoretical framework (i.e., transformative learning theory) and explain its implication for their online doctoral program. Jiang, Ballenger, and Holt (2019) also introduce their theoretical framework (i.e., Community of Inquiry) in the literature review section. In these cases, I selected and coded the relevant parts of the literature reviews.

Initial codes were identified and assigned to each of the highlighted meaning units – using critical notions in the research questions or the articles. Most articles presented multiple developmental factors and pedagogical strategies. I also made notes of potential categories emerging from the highlighted parts in the margins of the articles. These initial codes were all entered into a qualitative analysis tool (i.e., Atlas.ti).

The second round of reading (i.e., axial coding) was undertaken using the tool, with the codes more carefully examined and compared with and against each other. An attempt to answer the research questions was made by selecting the codes that were ascribed more weight (e.g., appeared more frequently) within and across the articles or directly relevant to the research questions. The other codes that were less weighted or not directly connected to the research questions were removed at this stage. Those selected codes were logically organized and grouped into independent categories. These categories were shared and discussed with three online doctoral students conducting their thesis projects on online education supervised by the present author. Based on the conversations–a mechanism of utilizing the concept of critical friends (Lincoln & Guba, 1985) to increase the trustworthiness of the qualitative research outcomes– the categories with representative codes were checked and validated.

The final stage of analysis (i.e., selective coding) focused on generating themes to answer the three research questions. As a result, 12 themes have been drawn from the reviewed articles, which will be presented in the following section of this chapter.

Findings and Discussions

What Are the Stated Reasons for the Development of Online Doctoral Education?

There are at least five different reasons stated in the reviewed articles. Each article positions its rationale for the development of ODPs in distinctive educational and research contexts such as distance education, doctoral education, professional education, and international education. The review results clearly suggest a dynamic, interdisciplinary, multi-focal nature of the scholarship and practice of online doctoral education. Each of the five reasons will appear below in turn with a selected excerpt that illustrates how the concerned rationale is presented and discussed in the reviewed papers.

Growth in Online Higher Education

The most frequently stated reason for developing ODPs is the fast growth in online education. Many authors open up their articles by describing the contextual background of the growing numbers of online programs offered by universities and online students registered in those programs. The below excerpt effectively demonstrates how the rationale for online doctoral education is typically argued.

[W]e have witnessed the exponential growth of online education. According to Babson Survey Research Group, more than 6.3 million students in the U.S. took at least one online course in Fall 2016… Internet and digital technologies… have dramatically transformed the way education is delivered… Such new tools have enabled online delivery of course materials to students outside of brick-and-mortar classrooms in an asynchronous manner… students with full-time leadership positions in public education benefit from online programs as they provide self-paced flexibility. (Jiang et al., 2019, pp. 296–297)

The exponential growth in online higher education, enabled and facilitated by the educational use of advanced communication technologies, is set as a benchmark for doctoral-level educational practice. The flexibility of online education that allows adult learners (often professionals with full-time work) to access university education is the key to this argumentation, which is applicable and translatable to other educational contexts, including doctoral education. Most of the articles starting from this context tend not to have any statements specific about doctoral education or doctoral studies.

Growth in Professional Doctoral Education

The second frequently stated reason underlying the fast development of online doctoral education is situated in the context of professional doctoral education. A group of reviewed articles mention the recent changes in the doctoral education landscape, including the growing demand for a doctorate among professionals and the increasing diversity in doctoral provisions.

In recent years, there has also been an increase in professional doctorate awards in the USA, the UK, and Australia, accompanied by studies and discourse about their design and impact… Professional doctorates are designed in many ways and are offered as pre-service or in-service degrees. They range from doctorates that structure coursework and a discipline-specific dissertation to doctorates that are designed in collaboration with employers and include research that is conducted in the workplace and supervised by university faculty. (Kumar & Dawson, 2013, p. 165)

This set of literature tends to perceive online doctoral education as an effective means for professional development, supporting professionals to acquire up-to-date knowledge and integrate it into their workplace to improve their practice. Such an approach has shifted a traditional view on the purpose of doctoral education – from knowledge creation to knowledge acquisition (and application). Thus, although both Jiang et al. (2019, in the previous section) and Kumar and Dawson (2013) mention the fact that ODPs allow adult students to remain in their workplace while pursuing a doctorate as a starting point, where and how those doctoral programs will bring their students to as an ending point can differ.

Demands in the Professional Field

Another frequently stated rationale for offering online doctoral education (more “academic” doctorates, including PhD) tends to be situated in urgent needs of specific professions and professional contexts such as nursing, educational leadership, and social work. Despite their apparent similarity with the previous point about the growing professional doctoral education, this set of selected statements provides an increased level of urgency and specificity to the discussion.

Increased numbers of doctorally prepared nurses are needed due to a demand for faculty, administrators, researchers, and theorists who possess a nursing doctorate, a demand that exceeds the supply… However, when nurses make the decision to pursue a doctorate, they tend to be older than students in other disciplines, typically have established careers, have financial and family responsibilities, and unlike most other doctoral students, the majority of them work full-time and study part time… In the United States there are only 88 doctoral programs in nursing… finding one that is within commuting distance, not to mention consistent with the student’s research interests, may be impossible. To address the barrier of proximity, nursing programs are offering distance learning options and they are becoming a common method of acquiring a nursing education. (Halter, Kleiner, & Hess, 2006, pp. 99–100)

As can be labeled as online “academic” doctoral education, the ultimate outcomes of the online doctoral education program in Halter et al. (2006) is meeting “a demand for faculty, administrators, researchers, and theorists.” Thus, the focused aim of the program is rather academic, which is distinguishable from the practice-oriented purposes of professional doctorates that mainly target improving professional practices and technical performances in the fields. The differences are, however, not always explicitly stated but implicitly assumed.

Internationalization of Education

A few reviewed articles discuss the reason for online doctoral education within a dynamic interplay of the increase and decrease in international education (more specifically, internationalized education market). This line of argumentation tends to be merged into the marketization discourse, seeing online doctoral education as a competitive product which could attract a larger group of students worldwide. Authors with this perspective often explicitly refer to students as customers. For example, Combe (2005) argues:

International education has grown into a substantial worldwide industry… However, there is some evidence to suggest that over the last three decades growth in international education has been slowing down… This slowing of overall market growth may reflect a maturing industry and is likely to increase the level of competition between education service providers seeking to operate in international markets… The development of e-learning technologies has presented providers with opportunities as well as challenges as they seek to positively enhance their educational value chain to effect lower costs, enhanced differentiation of products and reap the benefits of economies of scale and scope to create a competitive advantage. One way of achieving this is to target high value customers with access to advanced qualifications at Master’s or Doctorate level. (p. 119)

Reading such statements as “the educational market has been saturated, and thus, educational providers need to find a niche market” may not be a total surprise given the neoliberal climate in the current higher education context. Internationalization discourse, providing a big picture, is compatible with other reasons mentioned earlier – the growth in online education and professional doctoral education. In fact, most of the reviewed articles stress the international nature of their focused ODPs where the diversity of students’ ethnic and cultural backgrounds is apparent. Regardless of the fundamental financial interests in such internationalization among doctoral institutions and programs, the international cohort community seems to have pedagogical merits.

Social Justice-Oriented Rationale

The internationalization of education is not only (and always) driven by profit-oriented market principles. Despite the small number, several articles approach international online doctoral education with a social justice-oriented perspective from a vantage point of less developed countries (LDCs) lacking doctoral education opportunities available at the local level. In those articles, ODPs are usually offered by universities located in more developed countries, serving students located in LDCs. Syler and Venkatesh (2018) is a rare article that discusses doctoral education provisions in LDCs (i.e., Cameroon in Africa).

LDCs face various complex problems and needs, such as the availability of potable drinking water, eradication of infectious diseases, elimination of poverty, and availability of healthcare, that require well-developed and sustainable solutions… [LDCs] urgently need to develop intellectual capital internally in the form of scholars, leaders, and technicians… Doctoral programs in LDCs, for example, allow [researchers] to expand their knowledge and insights throughout the global information systems (IS) community… Such endeavors require the support and contribution of scholars in developed countries. (p. 2)

Although the concerned doctoral program in Syler and Venkatesh (2018) is mainly operated face-to-face on multiple campuses in Cameroon, Ghana, Uganda, and Nigeria, it also serves online students from various places in Africa, using video conferencing tools. The article describes the authors’ unique experience of coordinating an online doctoral course with other educators and experts dispersed across the world. One of the authors clearly articulates their social justice-oriented rationale for online doctoral education as: “I decided to take on the course for a simple reason: to give back to the community in any way I could, which I feel is my true calling” (p. 3). Given that the authors themselves are also located in the United States – distant from the doctoral program – such teaching efforts could be only feasible through being mediated by communication technologies.

What Are the Stated Pedagogical Concerns About Online Doctoral Programs?

There are multiple pedagogical concerns about online doctoral education discussed in the reviewed articles. Such concerns are primarily associated with the inherent nature of learning at a distance and the unique characteristics of adult students. The shared theme across those concerns is their double-edginess – those concerns are advantages and disadvantages of online doctoral education, at the same time. As discussed earlier, one of the rationales for developing ODPs is to meet the growing educational needs among adults with other responsibilities. A greater level of physical flexibility offered by ODPs enables those adults to begin their doctoral study in the first place; however, the same flexibility creates subsequent pedagogical challenges such as a sense of isolation that often threaten successful learner engagement in ODPs. In addition, adult learners themselves walk into the programs with their own difficulties caused by their personal and professional circumstances.

The distinctive features of doctoral “level” of studies add additional academic challenges to adult distance learning scenarios. The following excerpt effectively captures the combination of the three: distance learning, adult learners, and doctoral studies.

Working students with families must balance career and home obligations with their academic responsibilities. Staying in contact with their doctoral advisor (chair) is more difficult for students at a distance. Another common problem for older students that have been away from school is the need to strengthen their academic writing and research skills. Weak writing skills result in more drafts, and poor research skills increase the time to complete the proposal and the data analysis. Students also find the transition from taking structured courses to writing the dissertation or doctoral study challenging because of the need to work independently. (Hogan & Devi, 2019, p. 61)

Previous research has attempted to address one or more of those challenges. There are at least four pedagogical concerns frequently addressed in the 47 reviewed articles.

Flexibility and Structure

While ODPs provide a significant level of physical flexibility at the entry point, they tend to employ a more structured approach to their pedagogical design. Given that most doctoral students are experienced professionals who are “seeking to enhance their skills in research, education, and leadership in their respective professions,” ODPs tend to be structured “to improve the students’ abilities to educate and conduct research in their disciplines” (Cotter, Welleford, & Drain, 2008, p. 262). Especially in the European context, where doctoral studies mainly involve individual students pursuing their thesis projects with supervisory support, ODPs are often called “taught” programs, including tutor-guided coursework. In North American and other contexts where it is common for doctoral students to take courses, ODPs are still more structured than face-to-face ones. ODPs tend to offer a limited range of “pre-selected” online courses to make the program more structured and guided.

Within the structured taught part, however, these programs also attempt to provide pedagogical flexibility to adult students regarding when and how they engage with learning. With a small number of exceptions, most learning activities in online doctoral education are organized asynchronously, using lecture videos, independent readings, discussion forums, research projects, and reflective writings. In addition, most programs support students’ own choice of learning content and project topic, which are closely related to their personal interests and professional experiences:

In the DPHRS [Doctoral Program in Health-Related Sciences], another issue was evident in the development stage—students would be experienced health professionals and health professional educators, who, within their respective disciplines, had more extensive knowledge than the instructors but were lacking in a formal didactic research and education framework… It becomes incumbent upon the DPHRS program and its instructors to facilitate the students’ understanding of their respective learning styles, processes, and preferences. Thus, a learner-centered environment places the health professional student at the center of the course organization and processes. (Cotter et al., 2008, p. 264)

As Lee (2020a) observes, such part-timeness and practice-orientedness are the shared aspects of online doctoral studies, which are fundamentally grounded in the flexibility of ODPs. Martin and Noakes (2012) also report online doctoral students’ appreciation of freedom of “learning by wandering” in their studies. At the same time, experienced professionals who begin their part-time doctoral studies after many years of a study break tend to lack study skills, habits, or time. Thus, an effective program structure with carefully designed learning activities and guidance is necessary for their successful doctoral journey. In a nutshell, online doctoral education literature focuses on finding and realizing an optimal balance between the seemingly contradictory principles of flexibility and structure.

Isolation and Community

While structured flexibility is a vital design principle underpinning most ODPs, many articles note the issue of students feeling isolated and disconnected from their university. Although a sense of isolation is a common emotion that may be experienced by any distance learner, Sunderland (2002) has provided an in-depth and sophisticated explanation of a psychological gap experienced by educational professionals enrolled in an online PhD program in applied linguistics:

Together, these geographical and temporal gaps can be seen as creating “a psychological and communications gap, a space of potential misunderstanding between the inputs of instructor and those of the learner”… This suggests a consideration of the particular affective needs of the distance learner, as well as their pedagogic needs. However, the psychological gap may also be an effect of the complex identity of the distance student. They are likely, after all, to be working as a professional, possibly even doing the same sort of job as the teachers on their distance programme. And this psychological gap may not only be an effect of the relationship between student and the “distant” tutor, but also of the differences between the institution with which the student studies and that at which they work, the academic discourse practices by which they are characterized, and the political regimes which directly or indirectly govern these two institutions. (p. 234)

Many authors, including Sunderland (2002), perceive such a psychological gap as one of the major problems and drawbacks in online doctoral education, resulting in student mistrust and dissatisfaction with the program, loss of confidence and demotivation in their studies, and subsequently, poor academic progress and drop-out. To address this problem, authors have employed diverse community-oriented remedies. Therefore, developing student support networks in ODPs appears to be the most frequently researched topic in the reviewed literature. Common strategies employed to improve the community-aspect of online doctoral education include i) establishing a cohort-based program structure (e.g., Kumar et al., 2011; Provident et al., 2015), ii) facilitating synchronous online interactions (e.g., Hogan & Devi, 2019; Myers, Singletary, Rogers, Ellor, & Barham, 2019), and iii) organizing short face-to-face residentials (Cotter et al., 2008; Halter et al., 2006). Most ODPs adopt more than one strategy (often all three), which is clearly demonstrated in the following description of an ODP:

[W]ith a cohort-based format that includes online coursework and interactions with a one-week session on campus… We designed online courses in the program to include multiple forms of synchronous and asynchronous interaction… At the end of their first year, students took a summer seminar that consisted of online activities to prepare for the one-week campus-based experience and follow-up online assignments. Program faculty collaboratively led the campus experience, which was intended to help students get acquainted with the university through interactions with one another, faculty both in and outside the program, administrators, and librarians. (Kumar et al., 2011, p. 129)

Researchers have found that the sense of isolation and the sense of community are closely interlinked in online doctoral studies (Berry, 2017). It is critical to ensure that distance students feel that there is a strong academic community exists in their program and that they also belong to the community. The cohort-based program structure, where a group of 20 or 30 students start and progress through the program together at the same time, has proven effective – especially for the taught part of the program. Although having synchronous interactions (using telecommunication tools) and face-to-face residentials as mandatory components of ODPs may reduce the flexibility and accessibility of these programs, many students appreciate those community-building opportunities. Therefore, again, it comes down to the matter of finding the right balance between improving flexibility and a sense of community within a single ODP.

Technology Anxiety and Research Literacy

While most articles (e.g., Jiang et al., 2019; Martin & Noakes, 2012) emphasize the potential of advanced communication technology for enabling adult professionals to pursue a doctorate and increasing a sense of belonging among those students, it is crucial to notice that online doctoral students also experience a range of technology-related difficulties. Another set of pedagogical concerns that emerged in the reviewed articles is closely related to a lack of technology and research literacy among online doctoral students. For example, Bolliger and Halupa (2012) report that online doctoral students tend to experience a high level of technology anxiety, “negative emotions associated with computer use” (p. 83), especially at the beginning of their program, and such anxiety strongly influences their overall learning experiences.

In a similar vein, several articles (e.g., Kumar et al., 2012; Tuñón & Ramirez, 2010) focus on a lack of information literacy among online doctoral students, exploring how to design and deliver effective library training to those distance learners. The reviewed articles stress the importance of an early introduction to a library system and solid orientation on using information technology for research purposes, which is an essential part of research literacy required for the successful completion of doctoral studies. It is further suggested that library training needs to be effectively integrated into student coursework in an ongoing manner “beyond one-shot library training” (Tuñón & Ramirez, 2010, p. 989).

Of course, technology anxiety (or information illiteracy) is not always associated with particular learner groups or simply caused by a lack of technical skills. For example, online PhD students may experience a high level of technology anxiety at the beginning of their doctoral program even though they have technical skills required (Lee, 2020a). Encountering new people, new knowledge, and new practices at the same time “online” – such as engaging with a doctoral level of academic discussions online, whether synchronously or asynchronously, may cause a great sense of insecurity and anxiety among online doctoral students (also see Lee, 2021). That is, the notion of technology anxiety needs to be more holistically understood, which can be experienced when online doctoral students do not have a complete set of skills (online social and communication skills, academic and learning skills, etc.).

Nevertheless, some of the reviewed articles link those challenges to the particular characteristics of online doctoral students (Brahme & Walters, 2010). Bolliger and Halupa (2012) discuss the differences between doctoral students enrolled in online programs and those in traditional programs as:

[M]ost students in online doctoral programs are nontraditional students – many are between 45 and 60 years of age… These students did not grow up using these types of technologies and many obtained their undergraduate degrees 25 or more years previously, before online programs were available. In contrast, the median age of individuals awarded doctoral degrees was 33.0 years in 2004–2005 and 32.7 years in 2005–2006 (Snyder & Dillow, 2010). Because this segment of the population typically consists of older individuals who are returning to higher education to obtain a doctoral degree after spending a considerable amount of time in the field, returning graduate students may be less comfortable with the online delivery format than their traditional counterparts. (p. 82)

Unfortunately, the present review has failed to find literature that offers more recent perspectives about online doctoral student populations; thus, it is difficult to know how the populations have been changed in more recent years. Alternatively, it may be a fortunate and welcoming result that suggests the maturity of the scholarship of online doctoral education, moving away from the simple representation of the populations and their experiences.

Diversity and Inequality

As discussed earlier, the internationalized education, often coupled with social justice-oriented agenda, is one of the stated reasons for the development of online doctoral education. Subsequently, there are a growing number of international students in ODPs, including those from less privileged backgrounds who cannot afford to the full-time doctoral studies on campus. Such a great diversity among online doctoral students in terms of their cultural and social backgrounds and professional and educational experiences presents both pedagogical advantages and challenges to online doctoral educators. For example, Roumell and Bolliger (2017) report the positive side of such diversity from the staff perspective as:

The most-often satisfying aspect mentioned by faculty was that the distance environment provides students with access to doctoral education who otherwise would not have the opportunity to pursue a doctorate. Another perceived benefit is that distance programs include more diverse students in regard to educational and professional background (and subsequently a variety of research topics), making the student body more diverse in terms of gender, race, ethnicity, and ability. (p. 88)

The social justice-oriented argument is also evident in Williams, Wall, and Fish (2019) that shows online doctoral education is more accessible to underserved students where more than 30% of students are the first generation of college graduates than traditional doctoral education (the average percentage of those students in science and engineering doctoral programs is 17%).

Berg (2016) similarly notes the advantages from the student perspective as:

Some [students] saw an advantage in the online format, especially for [underrepresented minority] students, as exemplified by one student: As the majority of this educational journey has been online and therefore demographically blind, I do not believe my doctoral experience has been any different than most of my co-hort. I find that I am a student far more often than an “ethnic minority” student. In a similar vein, students wrote about the large cultural diversity of the online classroom, which often includes international students, as a positive characteristic: “… meeting other learners from all nations.” (p. 231)

Nevertheless, the same authors also notice the unavoidable academic and socioeconomic gap among the diverse population of online doctoral students. Williams et al. (2019) argue a high interrelationship between doctoral students’ academic persistence and their parental educational level. Although there is no direct impact, the social and economic circumstances of the first-generation students my indirectly influence their learning abilities and attitudes – such that “the self-regulation behaviors learned early in life from the parents persist, apparently, even into mid-life” (p. 71). Berg (2016) also reports diverse academic and nonacademic challenges faced by the underrepresented minority students in ODPs and the crucial roles of academic supervisors in their degree completion. Beyond the problem of inequality among doctoral students, the diverse needs, learning preferences, personalities, and professional and personal situations of adult students all strongly impact their learning experiences and achievement in online doctoral education, which calls for more inclusive and sensitive pedagogical approaches of doctoral educators (see Lee, 2020b; Rovai and Grooms, 2004).

What Are the Stated Theoretical Approaches to Conceptualizing Online Doctoral Studies?

This final group of themes analyzed in the review project is about how previous researchers conceptualize online doctoral studies to better understand student experiences in ODPs and address different pedagogical concerns discussed in the above section. As the development of ODPs is primarily grounded in the existing practice and increasing demands in online higher education and professional doctoral education, there has been some theoretical resonance between online doctoral education and the two. In other words, the following three interlinked theoretical approaches, commonly appear in online higher educational and professional doctoral education literature, have been most frequently adopted by the authors of the reviewed articles. It is worth mentioning that a large number of these articles (n = 24) neither include a theoretical framework section nor name any particular learning theory.

Constructivist Learning Theories

Most articles with specific theoretical conceptualizations stress that online doctoral students are adult professionals who demand student-centered learning opportunities through which they are effectively guided to construct meaningful knowledge for their own professional practice and development. Thus, the authors of those articles have utilized different learner-centered learning and practice-oriented learning theories, which can be collectively called constructivist learning theories. The fundamental pedagogical principles drawn from constructivist learning theories underpin the design of several ODPs discussed in the literature. The following two excerpts clearly set the tone of such theorization.

[A] learner-centered environment is one in which students are partners in the learning, have multiple options for learning, work collaboratively, and help define the objectives and methods of the course… In a learner-centered environment, the students’ struggle is a process that leads to improved outcomes (McKeachie & Svinicki, 2006). Learner-centered programs are organized differently to stress the student’s responsibility for learning and teaching along with the development of a faculty perspective that moves from didactic, lecture-discussion to a facilitative resource exchange. (Cotter et al., 2008, p. 258)

Historically, a range of traditions related to progressive education and situated learning theories have contributed to research connecting learning and the workplace (Cobb, 2001; Kolb, 1984; Mezirow, 1991; Smith, 2003). Nevertheless, the literature suggests (Argyris & Schon, 1974) that workplaces and universities have traditionally been somewhat estranged though the emergence of student centred learning and the development of transferable skills has clearly kindled initiatives to seek common ground. (Crossman, 2005, p. 19)

Community of Inquiry and Community of Practice

Within the broader constructivist learning paradigm, some articles zoom into more specific social aspects of online learning or professional learning processes and outcomes. These articles have conceptualized online doctoral studies as a dynamic process of creating a community of inquiry or participating in a community of practice. Earlier in this chapter, two interconnected phenomenal aspects of online doctoral education – online doctoral students feeling a sense of isolation and a sense of community – have been discussed as one of the common pedagogical concerns that have received ongoing scholarly attention from online doctoral educators. Those authors concerned about building a sense of community among doctoral students have utilized a community-oriented approach to conceptualizing online doctoral studies. The Community of Inquiry (CoI) framework is, in fact, the most frequently used one among the community-oriented learning theories, providing valuable insights and guidance into ODP design.

The CoI framework consists of three elements (social, cognitive, and teaching presence) that takes place in the interaction of individual learners and their instructor, as well as the categories and indicators that are to define each presence and to code the transcripts. The element of social presence was defined by Garrison et al. (2000) as “the ability of participants in a community of inquiry to project their personal characteristics into the community, thereby, presenting themselves to others as real people” (p. 89). Effective communication, open communication, and group cohesion are three major aspects of social presence. To achieve educational goals, online course design should create the environment for inquiry to allow quality, open educational communication between learners and the instructor. (Jiang et al., 2019, p. 298)

Another community-oriented theory, which appears several times in the reviewed articles, is Community of Practice (CoP). While the CoI framework has its root in online learning, CoP theory is initially developed in the context of professional learning – more specifically, the apprenticeship context where a novice trainee develops into an expert member of a specific professional community through interacting with other members in the community. Greene, Cote, Koperniak, and Stanley (2021) conceptualize online doctoral studies as a process of participating in moving between multiple CoPs. Thus, doctoral students develop their professional and academic identities as members of different CoPs in their doctoral programs and professional settings. This line of theoretical discussion is particularly relevant to the idea of a professional doctorate, highlighting the immediate impact of doctoral studies on students’ professional development.

As individuals engage in a [CoP], they move from legitimate peripheral participation to full participation. Wenger (1998) came to see this process as an important factor in identity development… Wenger-Trayner and Wenger-Trayner (2015) zoom out to view [CoPs] in multiplicity on a landscape of practice. Through this lens, they explore implications of negotiating identity while navigating boundaries between a range of communities… It is these key concepts of accountability to a community, boundary crossing between communities, and inexpressibility of identity within a particular community that frame and organize our study. (p. 94)

Transformative Learning Theory

Four articles focus on online doctoral students’ transformative learning experiences. Mezirow’s (1997) transformative learning theory, one of the prominent theoretical accounts of how adults learn and develop, is referenced in nine articles. ODPs provide structured opportunities for adult professionals to critically reflect on their “familiar” practices and systematically engage with relevant scholarship. The international nature of online doctoral communities also allows doctoral students to be exposed to diverse perspectives and rational discourses with students from different cultural and professional backgrounds. Through those intellectual and social engagements, doctoral students experience meaningful perspective transformations. Such perspective transformation is the ultimate goal of the professional learning process, which involves adults’ active engagement with constructive learning activities in a supportive learning community. The following excerpt effectively captures the essence of transformative learning experiences in ODPs.

[T]he student often experiences change as the result of a multiple step process frequently characterized by a disorienting dilemma, followed by the use of active learning, and reflection. The dilemma can serve as a catalyst for learners to examine their assumptions and beliefs through engagement in self-reflection and discourse with others related to changing their view. According to transformative learning theory, this process results in the reorganization of perspective with action to promote change (Santalucia & Johnson, 2010). The product is a learner who emerges with skills to effect broader change. The scientific literature includes outcome studies of doctoral students’ transformative learning experiences… Trusting relationships and establishing support have been cited as important elements in facilitating transformative learning processes in online environments. (Provident et al., 2015, pp. 129–130)

Conclusion

Although the emergence of online doctoral education is often discussed in the context of the advancement of the Internet and communication technologies, the present review demonstrates that its development is firmly rooted in at least two seemingly separate educational phenomena – the growth in online higher education and the growth in professional doctoral education. As briefed in the introduction of this chapter, the growth in both online higher education and professional doctoral education has complex societal backdrops. In addition, internationalized education context has added another layer of complexity to the online doctoral education practice. Although the detailed discussion on those backdrops for the fast development of ODPs falls outside the scope of this review, the review results provide online doctoral educators with several useful recommendations:

  • Online doctoral educators need to have a holistic understanding of online doctoral studies: Most authors of the reviewed articles have not brought the complexity to their writings, exclusively focusing on one aspect of online doctoral education (e.g., online education, professional doctorate, and internationalized education). Consequently, there has been an inevitable chasm within the scholarship of online doctoral education – one emerged in online higher education contexts, and the other originated in professional doctoral education contexts (with a few exceptions found in international education settings). Given that the experiences of online doctoral students are constructed by multiple social and pedagogical characteristics of online doctoral studies (Lee, 2020a), such separation in the academic discussion limits our view of online doctoral education. This calls for integrated research efforts to construct a more comprehensive understanding of online doctoral studies and students.

  • The design of ODPs is to find the right balance between multiple conflicting needs of online doctoral students: The complexity of online doctoral education is inevitably manifested in the pedagogical tensions in many ODPs, as observed by most authors in this review project. For example, there is an ongoing tension between providing flexible learning opportunities to adult students with different learning needs and situations and offering well-structured guidance to support their learning experiences. Finding the right balance in the design of an ODP is critical for online doctoral students’ retention and success. Also, many online doctoral students appreciate the accessibility of online programs, which enables them to maintain their professional and personal lives; however, many also suffer from a sense of isolation and disconnection created by the physical and psychological distance from tutors and peers (Byrd, 2016). To address such tension (and increase a sense of community among distance students), most ODPs employ a cohort-based structure and diverse community-based pedagogical strategies. However, it is essential to remember that such strategies could, in turn, reduce the accessibility and flexibility of the ODPs.

  • There are critical but often neglected research topics in online doctoral education literature: The aforementioned concerns are similar to the common pedagogical issues observed in online higher education or professional learning settings. Most of the reviewed articles focus on those concerns – the flexibility (or structure) of ODPs and the sense of isolation (or community) among online doctoral students. Meanwhile, a relatively small number of articles concern other problems that tend to stem from the particular characteristics of adult learners (e.g., a high level of technology anxiety), doctoral studies (e.g., a lack of research literacy), and international education (e.g., diversity and inequality). Despite the importance of those issues for successful online doctoral studies, there has not been enough scholarly attention to those problems in online doctoral education literature.

  • The online doctoral education scholarship can benefit from an integrated theoretical approach: The same pattern emerges from the analysis of theoretical approaches employed in the reviewed articles. Most of the reviewed articles use either online learning theories or adult learning theories to conceptualize online doctoral studies – as demonstrated by the four most commonly employed theories (i.e., constructive learning theories, Community of Inquiry, Community of Practice, transformative learning theory). As the number of ODPs and students enrolled in those programs grows across the globe, the program design improves and pedagogical practices in those programs mature (Holmes & Rockinson-Szapkiw, 2020). It is timely to reflect on the maturity of the scholarship of online doctoral education and the rigor of the current scholarly understanding and practice. While the present review reveals valuable insights into online doctoral education research and practice, it also suggests that more research needs to be conducted using a holistic perspective to develop a comprehensive understanding of online doctoral studies.