Online for Doc Students

Today, we would like to share a paper, entitled, "An Account of Online Learning Experiences with First-Year Doctoral Students" by our relatively new Associate Director, Dr. Sheena Ghanbari with two colleagues, Nahid Nariman and Karina Viaud. In an effort to gain a different perspective of the student experience of writing a literature review, the authors conducted one course online to see how students engaged in dialogue about becoming a critical consumer of research. They used Google Drive as the platform for the shared activity and created four modules that presented course materials in a new way. Initial findings provided insights as to which areas of the course to develop further, garnered evidence of student comprehension, and revealed some students who had unique struggles developing a literature review. The online interaction allowed for flexible and adaptive approaches of teaching.

Additionally the students who may have suffered from impostor syndrome or felt like they were “faking their way through the course” no longer felt alone because they validated one another and provided words of support.