Ph.D. or Ed.D.: Which Degree is the Right Fit For You?
Video Transcription
[BLANK_AUDIO] Trident University international’s career advising and development center. I’m marketing specialist Daniel Sloan, and today we are bringing you PhD versus Ed.D. Which degree is the right fit for you? Today’s session will be led by your career advising and development center manager Tanya White Ernest.
Tanya has over 20 years of experience in workforce education training and development and HR career development. Learn more at Trident4careers.com. That’s Trident, the number 4 careers.com. A few minutes before we begin today’s session. All participants are muted. If you have any questions please submit it, submit via the question box or you can email to me directly at daniel.sloan@trident.edu.
And that last name is spelled S-L-O-A-N. There’ll be time for questions and answers at the end of this session where Tanya and today’s presenters Dr. Wenling Li and Dr. Heidi Gilligan will address any of your concerns. This session will be recorded and all attendees will receive a link to this webinar, a copy of the slides and other useful information later this week.
And now, here is Tanya. >> Good morning everyone and welcome to our webinar. Thank you so much for joining and I really should say good morning or good afternoon and potentially good evening depending on where you are located. Today we are speaking with and want to say a very gracious thank you to Doctors Wenling Li and Dr.
Heidi Gilligan who will be presenting and I will give you a full bio of each of them in just a moment. We are talking today about which degree between our Ph.D for educational leadership, and our Ed.D. for a educational leadership. Which degree would be right for you? So some of the things that we’re gonna talk about today, we’re gonna look at what are some of the fundamental differences between the two degrees, and how is the research process addressed? There’s been a lot of questions around that.
We wanna look at some of the skills that are required for both of those degrees, and another couple of areas that people tend to ask a lot of questions about are, how employers look at each one of these degrees as well as, what are some of the career opportunities that are available based on obtaining either the Ph.D.
or the Ed.D. I think it’s important that we do note that both these programs, as well as all of the other programs that we offer here at Trident University International are regionally accredited by WASC. And we are the only fully online university that is accredited by WASC which is the Western Association of Schools and Colleges and it’s also important I think to know that we do hold the gold standard and accreditation.
When you’re looking at accreditation programs there are several that are available including a national but gold standard is that regional accreditation and these programs do hold that level of accreditation. So as we start I want to introduce you to Dr. Li and Dr. Gilligan so I’m gonna start of by introducing Dr.
Heidi Gilligan. Dr. Heidi Gilligan currently serves as our director of Ed.D program at Trident University. She holds a Doctorate of Education in higher education leadership from California State University Long Beach. And a Masters degree in Exercise physiology and a bachelors degree in speech language pathology from San Diego State University.
she has 17 years of experience in higher education, administration and as a proper manager in a wide variety of areas including university honors, study abroad, graduate student services, freshmen success and students’ account services. Her research interest include access, retention and persistence of underrepresented college students, financial literacy for college students and professional development of students’ affairs personnel.
Welcome Dr. Gilligan. >> Thank you. >> Also, it is my pleasure to introduce Dr. Wenling Li And Dr. Li joined Trident in 2005 and became program director of our PhD in Educational Leadership in 2008. Dr. Li has her Ph.D in cognitive psychology Beijing Normal University and has post doc in department of psychology University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign.
Dr. Li was senior research scientist at the center of the study of reading University of Illinois at Havana. Sorry Champaign. Her primary research are reading writing an instructional approach in k through 12 and school leadership and administration. She has authored five books and numerous articles on dynamic machines in children’s learning and language mastery.
Welcome Dr. Li. >> Thank you. >> Oops, I’m revealing too much too quickly. What I love to do is sort of we are approaching this as more of a conversation today. We do encourage you to ask questions, but what we are what we are gonna ask, is jolt those questions down as we go through because we are gonna ask you if you would hold your questions till the end.
I’ve got some questions that I would like to ask both doctors today, and they are going to expand on, in a broad sense, these two programs. Please know that we will be offered additional webinars in the future that really drill down into each of these programs. So today is meant to be somewhat high level.
So let’s start with our first section. One of the things that I found in the career center is that students or alumni often express a lot a lot of confusion about why don’t we have two degrees, there is the Ed.D in education leadership, there is Ph.D, why are there two? What is the difference? So we are really going to jump in at that point and talk about what are the differences? What are the fundamental differences between the two degrees and I’d really like to turn over to Dr.
Li to start in talking about the Ph.D. program. What is the fundamentals of that program? >> All right. Welcome everyone. So like today I just briefly introduce our program and focus on the differences between the Ph.d and the Ed.D. The Ph.d program is a doctoral philosophy that is focused on educational leadership.
We offer three concentrations, higher education, educational technology and also teaching learning and development in the Ph.D program. So today seems to work trying to compare the fundamental differences the Ph.D and the Ed.D so I just highlight some points for the Ph.D. program.
In the Ph.D. program students need to take 11 courses, and conduct an independent dissertation study. It takes about three to five years to finish the whole program to get Ph.D but definitely it’s up to individual’s efforts and time so how long can you put your time in the program.
So like a few student can finish in three years, most of students can finish dissertation study in four to five years, I have to say that’s for Ph.D. program. And the second point, the difference is, the dissertation in the Ph.D. program is like traditional 5 chapter dissertation. That is the Introduction, Review of Literature, Methodology, Results, and Discussion, Conclusion.
So that is the typical tradition of 5 chapter dissertation. And third point is, when you’re conducting your independent dissertation study, the research method could be quantitative study or qualitative study or mixed study design. So three different options on study design. For the career, our graduates mostly are taking like teaching professions in college or university or doing some consulting work or take administrative position in the field of education.
So, that is what most of our students are doing in their career. And the last point, in our PhD program, all the faculty, including part time, full time faculty they all have a Ph.D degree and also have very experienced, extensive research experience and teaching experience. So those are probably the, highlights differences from Ed.D program, that is something I can think of now.
We may ask Dr. Gilligan to explain more about Ed.D program. >> Absolutely Doctor Gilligan? >> Thank you everybody for joining us for very briefly the Ed.D program is a little bit different, it is a 60 unit program and it can take anywhere from three to four years to complete. A lot of that like Dr.
Li said it depends on the level of effort that the students put into it, and how quickly they progress to the course work and their dissertation study. We do not use a traditional five chapter dissertation we use an article dissertation format which is also considered a professional practice dissertation.
What that allows students to do is conduct research usually at their work side or something that’s applicable to them more in their immediate environment of practitioners and educational readers. And the format is a bit different in that there are three articles in the introduction and the conclusion.
So similar to other traditional five charts, there are still five components that just looks a little different in terms of the content with each component. And the highlight of the article dissertation format is that you will be well prepared or well positioned to submit some of your articles to peer review journal after completion of that study.
We do encourage students as well to explore quantitative-qualitative and mixed message research design. But in addition we are more open to action research design and problematic evaluation design. Again, going back to being a scholar practitioner is something that’s applicable to your immediate work environment.
So you’re gonna hear me say this a lot. We are most interested in students who are practitioners in the field of education who want to effect change at their current level. Our faculty do not generally come from a Ph.D background but many of them do hold Ph.Ds. Majority of them will have Ed.Ds and are experienced leaders in either elementary, secondary or post secondary education setting.
>> Wonderful, thank you both. So, from what you’ve said, it sounds as though both of these degrees require private research and sometimes that scares people a little bit. [LAUGH] So I’d love it if we could talk a little bit about the research process because, as it says here, we’re an online university so a lot of people think, oh my goodness, how am I going to conduct effective research? So, if we could talk a little bit about our process.
And we’ll start with you Dr. Li for the Ph.D program. >> Okay. So, like if we’re trying to talk about what is online research, I taught in traditional school and also online environment and so I don’t think there’s a big difference between online or traditional setting when you conduct your independent dissertation study.
But I do have some tips I want to share with you if you’re to choose to go to the Ph.D program for like how to prepare your research, how to finish your dissertation earlier. So, those are some tips I can think of now. So, first of all, it’s better to select your research area in whatever you’re doing from your familiar professional citing.
Since you’re familiar with your area so it’s easier to figure out what the main problem in your area or in your teaching or whatever you’re doing or what the main challenges you have. So then you can follow up your idea and that you know to do more literature related to this topic.
For in that way, you can begin to think about what the research direction you want to do. And second suggestion is, you need to think about how to collect your data as early as possible. So, generally our students will collect their data through either experiments like intervention study, so you do some study in school or in some training center or whatever so you can borrow some experiment and collect your data.
Or, you can do the survey study. You can collect data via survey, online or even your go to institution to collect your data. And the last option is, you can collect data through the secondary data. Now, there’s a lot of big secondary data available so you also can take advantage, that may be also easier to do.
So you need to consider how to collect your data. And, the third tip is communication. Communication is really the key for your success. So you should contact your instructor, mentor or chair in the program for when you have any questions related to your studies. So, if you ask questions, definitely, you may have some discussions, follow up and that is really a good suggestion for all of your students to communicate with your instructor, mentor, chair frequently.
And, last point is, prepare your dissertation study earlier. Some students come to the program, they just take courses then when they move to the dissertation stage, you just think about their topic. That time, they probably take a longer time to finish your whole program. So, if you can think about your study earlier, like when you’re taking courses, you can take advantage.
For example, you have assignments to do. Some search through literature to prepare your essay, you can think about selecting some topic you’re interested. Maybe later you’ll switch that to your dissertation study. So, when you’re taking courses prepare your topic, your study design, your methodology, your problem statement.
That way can help you to finish your research earlier. >> Excellent. I think it sounds like excellent advice too. [LAUGH] So Dr. Gilligan, would you mind sharing sort of a research process that one would follow in obtaining their Ed. D here at Trident? >> Okay. The Ed.D is probably structured a bit differently compared to the Ph.D.
We’re far more prescriptive in what we would like you to do and we identify milestones very early in your program of study that you need to meet in order to ensure that you’re making progress on your dissertation. So, we do allow you to you to conduct original research and, as I said before, you can use multiple methodology underlying option.
And we do have an applied research course sequence, and those first two classes are taken in your first year of study. And it begins to give you the space and the form to explore topics of interest related to your practitioner setting, explore the literature and formulate a topic that you might like to really dive into as part of your dissertation.
Typically, in a doctorate program, you’ll complete all of your course work and then move into your dissertation. The Ed.D operates a little differently in that the dissertation research course sequence is incorporated into the program of study. So you will be completing course work while you are developing your dissertation at the same time.
And, you conduct your dissertation study with the guidance of a mentor and your dissertation chair and your committee. And, again, we always encourage students to conduct research within your professional setting. And one of the things that you can begin to do early in the process is think about what’s occurring within your school district or at your school site, what data might be readily available to you? Identify those that you work with, professional colleagues who can help you access that data and really begin to bounce your ideas off of practitioners that you work with who can give you some guidance on what your possible opportunities are to conduct research that would be helpful within your immediate work life.
>> It’s perfect. Excellent. Well, when we communicant/g with students through the career center, one of the questions they tend to ask in any of their degrees, specifically when they’re looking at a doctoral degree program, and looking at these two is okay, what are the skills that I need in order to be successful, and I’m I gonna really need to be excellent at statistics, or what have you, if I do a Ph.D.
Obviously yes. But what I needed if I do an Ed.D. program. So I’d love us to talk a little bit about the skills that are needed to progress through the program and to obtain it. This time I’d like to start with Dr. Gilligan. >> I do wanna emphasize that I don’t want people to perceive the Ed.D as sort of a dissertation lite type of research process.
The academic rigor is very similar to the PhD. We are perhaps more open to qualitative designs and more case study and an area of focus in terms of its topic. It’s very important that you bring to the table that you are an active scholar practitioner, that you’re able to identify current issues that are of particular interest within elementary secondary or post secondary settings.
And you need to be able to make distinct and very concise links to what if the current research stating in peer review journals. So you need to be familiar with your professional practice and probably actively involve with some of the professional development organizations that are related to your leadership.
Well, and I also feel that it is important for you to analyze and apply your findings within the practitioner settings so very early on in the process you’re gonna to be asked to reflect on your own leadership skills and your own ability to connect leadership skills to what you are seeing in your particular area of practice.
And how you can link leadership and research and conduct data driven decision making policy and change. >> Okay, excellent so Dr. Li I would assume that there is some similarities but I would also assume that there is some difference as well. So if you would give us a little bit of highlight in terms of the skills required for the Ph.D program.
>> Yeah for the skill requirements I think it’ similar between the two programs but I want to address the program learning outcome we have in the PhD program. First, there’s the information literacy. I believe it’s similar. When our students go through our program, they had to learn how to identify, how to locate information needed for their research.
They know how to retrieve information from the literature online or in library. And second is the communication skill. We do have a lot of training either written or oral communication skills so definitely it’s very critical if you want to teach later on and also in the courses we do have like a special assignments just train students how to orally communicate, how to present.
So that also is required for the program. The third one is the research skill. So you know that all the PhD students have to conduct independent research so definitely you need to develop the skills like study design, conducting study and the data collection, analyzing and also interpreting your results.
So all the quantitative data analysis skills is required for research and number four is critical thinking, that is, I believe it’s the main theme across all the programs at Trident. So that’s only in the PhD program we also need to develop the critical thinking skills, so you can do the independent research and also can how to evaluate program like a lot of assignments required to your critical thinking training.
And number fifth, is diversity so like we should be open to diverse point of view and the concepts and identify and address the problems in this field. So those is the main five learning outcomes in our program so also we are trying to address all of them in our courses. >> Excellent.
So that really leads us to, because obviously in obtaining these degrees, generally people are doing it because people they want to enhance or further their careers, and so there is always the question in regards to how do employers look at these degrees. So I’d love for us to talk a little bit about how the employer looks at the Ph.D versus the Ed.D degree.
Dr. Li we’ll start with you. >> All right so like our graduate from the Ph.D program have got trained about skills I just mentioned. So like a they are able to do the independent and research study so like also we mentioned earlier our graduates mostly are taking teaching positions in college or university doing consulting work or take administration positions in the field of education.
So like I believe our students should have the critical thinking skills and the research skills. So they are able to take the leadership in the field, they also can conduct research, also they are able to teach or do training in college or university level and also they could do like on consulting or research or data collection, data analysis and also results interpretation, so I believe those kind of work our students are qualified to do.
So that is I can think of now. >> Dr. Gilligan, quite often people wonder if the Ed.D degree is as a strong credential for employment as the PhD, so again can you share with us how employers view students who have attained that Ed.D. >> I get this question a lot. So the Ed.D is kinda the newcomer in terms of an up and coming degree because it’s more practitioner oriented, and I believe the trend in education and high education is that the practitioner oriented degrees are becoming more and more valued by people who’re hiring in education as well as it also provides the opportunity for people to tackle issues that are more immediate because generally I like to describe our Ed.D students as those who sort of have their feet on the ground.
They’re already doing the work, they’re already working in leadership and administration but they’re looking to take the next step in their career and typically the next step is gonna be bring linked to your ability to effectively change policy and read changes and best practices and basically lead effective change within your work site.
So the Ed.D gives them that skill set that they need. I do think there’s a growing need for these applied research programs because we see a lot of issues that occur in elementary, secondary and post-secondary settings. There’s a lot of need to make changes not only within those settings but also at the local, state and federal level.
If you have have some concerns about how an Ed.D is used, I encourage you to go to perhaps your human resources center or whatever resources you have at your site. So that you can have a frank conversation about whether or not an Ed.D is a good move professionally. Or speak with other people who have earned a degree and see what they’ve been able to do to advance their careers.
I don’t know anybody with an Ed.D who has been unsuccessful so I think it’s a growing need and a desire to see more Ed.Ds in the field. >> Wonderful, so that leads us to, I’m working hard, I get this degree, I’m holding in my tight little hand then maybe I’m lucky enough that I already have something.
So now I can progress where I am but maybe I don’t so what do I do, how do I use this? So we’ll start with you Dr. Gilligan, talk a little bit about how what kinds of opportunities, and I know you’ve talked in a broader sense but a little bit more depth in terms of I obtain that Ed.D how do I use it? >> When you obtain an Ed.D as I said before and I seem to be saying it over and over again, you are a practitioner and it’s about applied research so it really is about affecting change at your immediate work site and you are probably looking to move perhaps from a middle management position to upper management.
So in the elementary and secondary setting that could be becoming a department chair, principal, assistant principal, superintendent. In higher education you could become a specialized manager of academic programs, student affairs, student services and ultimately a vice president or a president The Ed.D allows you to take that next step in your career goals, if you wanna clarify that with an Ed.D occasionally you are qualified to teach as a full time instructor in higher education.
However, it’s more likely that you are gonna be qualified to teach the topics such as educational administration and educational leadership. You probably have to have several years of experience in the field before you can step into a higher education classroom. But again talk to whatever department or area of practice that you’re looking to segue into in terms of becoming a professor or instructor in higher education to determine whether or not an Ed.D will qualify you for those types of positions.
>> Okay, excellent I’m gonna throw a curve ball here but if someone is in say they work in corporate life and that they work in training and development something of that area, and they want to perhaps move into the corporate university or something, would an Ed.D serve them? >> Again I would make sure you take a look at some of the job descriptions to see whether or not an Ed.D is one of the degrees that listed as a minimum requirement or as a preferred requirement.
I think you’ll find more and more that an Ed.D is in fact one of the preferred degrees and it’s considered on equal standing with a PhD. It’s really gonna come down to the job description and the the scope that they’re looking for. >> Absolutely. Thank you. So luckily now of course most people know that if you want to teach in a higher education institution, you need to have that Ph.D in those instances.
But can you share what are some of the other ways that one might apply their Ph.D? >> Like is similar, like just \n Dr. Gilligan mentioned, I think a whether it’s that Ed.D or Ph.D, I think it’s also up to what kind of your own like personal goal is, and second is also depending on the institution or the organization you choose, what kind of job description, what kind of preferences they have, you need to tag.
So like for example, teaching Ed.D you can teach also and you got Ph.D you teach as well, but also you need to check. Maybe some colleague decide oh I need a PhD or some colleague said, either way so like is really up to what kind of job description it is. So like for a PhD generally we think I just base on our graduates in our experience, so I can say most of the graduates from PhD programs, they are teaching.
They may be part time teaching or full time teaching in the college or university, we have a lot of students that teach even they probably teach statistics because our programs train very well on statistics so like teaching is a lot of students have and also same thing like administration too.
So like sometimes they’ll hear Ed.D also works and also I know like a lot of our graduates also taking a lot of leadership positions, they are like [INAUDIBLE] in some university, and some things in college and also the consulting work. We have some graduates they are doing the consulting for like a data analysis I know some also like research consulting as well and also we have some students working.
in the research lab or some centers of training so they got Ph.D so like I think for the Ed.D or Ph.D I really couldn’t say exactly what is the cutting point, which job need Ph.D, which job need Ed.D, it’s really up to a lot of other factors. >> Okay, so thank you both for sharing an overview of the programs and as I said we are going to have further discussions about each of the programs in more steps.
However, hopefully what we talked about already has picked the interest of some of the individuals who are attending today so just in case someone is sitting there going oh my gosh I have to sign up right now. I’d love for us to share a little bit about what is the admissions process, what do they need to do in order to be accepted into the program and progress through the program.
So first, Dr. Li let’s talk about if someone has a Masters degree currently. and they want to pursue a Ph.D, what do they need to do? If you already have a Masters degree in this field so then you just need to provide your GPA, your transcript record to show GPA is 3.0 and above.
So that is GPA, and also you have to show your critical thinking skills so you need to submit a writing sample and also you need to have two recommendation letters, and if you’re an international students definitely you have to show your English level of the proficiency, like TOEFL score.
>> And then how about if they do not they have a bachelors, that \n they have not obtained the Masters, they wanna go straight to the Ph.D? >> If you haven’t got a Master’s degree, you only have a Bachelor degree in this field, definitely you also can apply. But the criteria is more strict.
The GPA must be 3.6 and above. So you have to provide your transcript to show your GPA level and you also need to provide your writing sample to show your analytical and critical thinking skills. And then you need two recommendation letters and also similar with other one, if you’re an international student, you need to show your English level like provide TOEFL.
And also I believe we missed one point, GRE is required if you are a Bachelors student. >> I believe that requirement stands for both programs. Is that correct? >> No, just for the Ph.D program. >> Okay, thank you. All right. Dr. Gilligan, if you would share with us if someone [INAUDIBLE] an Ed.D, how do they get it? >> We do require that you already have a Masters degree from an accredited institution, we prefer that you have a minimum of three years of experience working in an educational administration or educational leadership role, we need a visual transcript because they are is a 3.0 minimum GPA requirement.
I like to see a cover letter that indicates to me that you’ve thought about what the Ed.D can do for you professionally and what your career goals are, and I also like to hear a little bit about what your potential research topic is kind of indicating to me that you’ve explored some current issues in order to have a higher education, we need to see your resume or a CV.
We also require two letters of recommendation, my preferences for one of those letters to come from somebody that you currently work with preferably your supervisor and we also need to see a scholarly writing example. We do not require GRE report, and that’s it. >> Perfect I think that we have gotten a whole lot of excellent information, we talked a little bit about what all those differences between the two degrees, the little about the research process, the skills that are required looked at ways that employers value both those degree and both of them are highly valuable to employers and definitely from a first services point of view.
I definitely wanna go on record for saying that I absolutely agree with Dr. Gilligan and Dr. Li, you look at that job description, you look at what they’re asking you for and obviously if they’re asking you for a Ph.D specifically then that’s what you need to go for. They’re asking for a doctorate degree, an Ed.D degree what have you, cool.
You can go in that direction but it is valuable. I would not want you to rule one over the other just based on I should get it cuz this is what an employer wants. You need to know what they want. And then also looked some insights on career opportunities, so hopefully when we talk again, we will be talking to each individually on their program and so hopefully we’re going to be bringing in some of the students or graduates over the program to share a little bit about their experience and about their successes through obtaining the degree.
So at this point, we’d love to jump into any questions that you may have. Bob’s here. So there are a couple of questions already so one is that I’m gonna throw this out and either Dr. Li or Dr, Gilligan can answer or both but when you spoke quite a bit about qualitative and quantitative research and so the question is, what is the difference, what are you looking at? >> Okay, well qualitative research is a type of research methodology that is used very commonly in social sciences and education.
What that allows me to do as a researcher is to collect data that is related related to the participants voices and gather information about people’s perception and their thoughts around a particular phenomenon. So the value in doing that is that you can actually get a very in depth narrative story of what is occurring among our participants around a particular issue that you are probably fairly passionate about that there isn’t a lot of information about it right now, so that’s the value of qualitative analysis.
Quantitative everybody knows is numerical, can be viewed as \n very black and white very cut and dry so the analysis is what it is and it says what it says and you can’t go too much beyond that so qualitative is a little bit. I always like to describe it as fluid and grey. It can move from, you may think you’re going in one direction but you might be going to another.
Quantitative says work is done far in advance in terms of identifying your variables and what direction you’re going with your study. Qualitative just requires you to be very open to anything that you may find that’s related to the phenomenon under study. >> Dr. Li what are your thoughts? >> Yeah I think you answered very well, you covered well and I think in both programs we allow students to choose the research methodology given kind so you can select either a quantitative study, qualitative study, mixed or and also Ed.D you can do action study or some case study as well, right? Program evaluation.
>> Yeah, and I think most students in my experience working with doctoral students very early on in the process they tend to gravitate towards quantitative or qualitative but it’s okay to change your mind, there’s a lot of people who also recognize that the differences in the design also allow for different processing within your dissertation study and how your study progresses and what you’re comfortable with.
>> Yeah, one more point quickly like in the PhD program in the \n beginning some students they feel maybe more challenging, harder but actually in our program, I learned quantitative study generally take a shorter time than qualitative just in our student study. So qualitative they need to do some tape or video recording and they’d be recording and analyse generally taking longer time.
Sometimes it’s different. In the beginning our students say, oh quantitative, you’re just scared. I don’t want to do that analysis but when you figure out your variables, you know how to collect your data and you know which way you do the data analysis, it goes through easier from my point.
You have to learn and you can make decision which study design you can go. >> I agree. I did quantitative for my dissertation. [LAUGH] Like I said, the work is done up front as opposed to qualitative where you have a lot of data to go through. It’s a lot more labor intensive. Sure. >> Okay, so we have a question that says, I have a Masters degree in health sciences, public health concentration, my background is in nursing.
My long term goal is, sorry I have to scroll down on it, my long term goal is to be an educator. As a nurse, which degree would be most beneficial and or appropriate for me to pursue? Sorry, I’m scrolling. To pursue as a nursing career within military leadership environments? >> Just because we have health science Ph.D program as well.
I think you either can choose health science Ph.D program or education. We do have some nurse people come to education program because they want to teach later on, so that is you can think which maybe a little bit kind of differences. Depending on what you’re going to teach or where are you going to teach.
Also other news I can share, the health science Ph,D program and education, we are just preparing to submit a new proposal that is called the House Education, so this concentration will be shared in education program and health science as well. So like if you want to get Ph.D in health science, you can also choose that concentration so you share some kind of elective course in education program, or you’ll come to get Ph.D in education but you can have some courses from health science, so you now have the same concentration, health education.
>> Excellent, another question is about the dissertation so people often fear, [LAUGH] that portion of their Ph.D program and one of the questions is in the Ed.D program is there a defense or your dissertation? >> Yes absolutely, we do not have a proposal defense which is generally, one of them is a five chapter dissertation but absolutely we have a final presenting and you are required to present in front of your committee and \n all members of the committee need to sign off on your dissertation, the final chapter.
>> Excellent, and Dr. Li I’m gonna address the other one to you, what are some of the pointers that you can give someone in preparing for their dissertation? >> First of all, definitely you have to know your study very well. So if you did a literature review and you know exactly what research questions and your results, you can prepare very well.
But from my point of view the students definitely need to communicate with your chair, your committee members frequently so you have a lot opportunity to exchange ideas, to discuss issues so you kind of know the procedures and also some issues you may have in your writing. So in that you will be more confident doing the dissertation.
So in the PhD program we do have like a qualify exam, you have proposal defense and also dissertation defense, so you have multiple opportunities to communicate with your committee, and during preparing your proposal dissertation you also have a lot of opportunities to discuss with your committee chair, committee members, I think that is really the key, just communication with your mentor, chairs on your study.
>> And then another question, and again I will actually post this stuff to both of you, is in the data analysis courses, can you give us sort of an overview of what types of data analysis courses are required in each of the degrees and how many of those courses are required? >> I can say first for the PhD program, we have a two statistics course.
One is basically on the descriptive and the bivariate analysis. I can say from an example like correlation, simple regression or chi-square, that kind of method you’re going to learn in the first course. And the second one we call advanced, so we learned more like multivariate analysis, so like multiple regression multiple regressions and factor analyses, and what else? I just suddenly forgot.
[BLANK_AUDIO] If I can think about later I can add. But this is more like focus on multivariate analyses. And we have a program, the software SPSS students need to use and also they have to learn how to use SPSS to do the data analysis. >>Dr. Gilligan? >> EdD program is very different in terms of we don’t have data analysis courses, we have the applied research sequence classes and within those two courses you are introduced to quantitative and qualitative methodology and design, we don’t dig into a lot of the statistics in terms of conducting analysis of the portion of the course but conceptually you need to understand when to run sort of type of analysis and we begin with T tests and probably as far as we get is around regression a student wanna go beyond regression within their doctoral dissertation we would provide them with additional support within the dissertation sequence and link them with methodological experts.
So because we don’t cover in the applied research sequence they would be required to become expert in that particular analysis if that is what they choose to use within their dissertations study, though instructional look differently. >> Okay well said. So I’m going to check one of this more I think that is all the questions that I see.
Daniel I know quite often get some different questions, sometimes people email so if you have any additional question, would you share those with Dr. Gilligan and Dr. Li? >> Sure, thank you, Tanya. And yeah, I do have a couple of questions and it seems a number of our participants are very focused on quantitative research.
This question I’m gonna send to Dr. Li first. For students who are think about coming into the program who are rusty with quantitative research and analysis, are there any tools for them to get up to speed, whether it’s before entering the program or during the program? >> Yes, we do.
Now at Trident, we have resources like workshop we offer students. When they come to the first course we have a quiz for student’s self evaluation. So you can go through the quiz, that’s very basic descriptive statistics so you can go through the quiz to see whether you are able to do, to answer those questions, if you’re able to, that means that you’re able to take the stat course.
We have very good faculty to teach that course and also later we’re trying to offer some tutoring, some lab for students who go through this course. Some students feel very challenged in the beginning but in the end like 90% of students pass those courses so like we have a lot of tutoring resources, we offer students and also when student conduct their dissertation so if they do have some problem doing data analysis for example, they also can also work with their committee chair so generally our faculty will have students to do that too.
[BLANK_AUDIO] >> Great, thank you and then the last question I have I’m going to send this one to Dr. Gilligan, can you talk about some of the experiences professional experiences that the professors at Trident have and how they bring some of these experiences into the classroom? >> Yes absolutely, I select instructions who have extensive experience in administration and leadership so within K 12 the instructors that I have placed in the classroom have had prior experience as principals or assistant principals, I have a few who are moving into assistant superintendent roles or superintendent of HR.
In addition on higher ed side there is a lot of faculty who have extensive experience working in student affairs administration, there are several who work in budget and finance so they bring real life experience to the classroom and can offer insights within the student’s assignments via feedback about some of the practical implications that perhaps the student hadn’t considered based on their own experience as leaders and I think it really enhances the student’s experience and connections they make with their faculties in the classroom.
[BLANK_AUDIO] >> Great. Thank you and then I’m gonna pause the same question to Dr Li. [BLANK_AUDIO] >> Would you ask it again, Daniel? >> Sure. Sorry. >> Can you talk about some of the professional experiences that professors in the Ph.D program have and have bring this experience into the classroom? >> Yeah like our faculty in the Ph.D program, they all have a Ph.D degree and also they do have a lot of research on teaching experience.
So when people apply for the job in the Ph.D program we generally check whether they have rich research experience or not because later we need them to help our students on their dissertation study. [BLANK AUDIO] >> Great. Thank you Dr. Li and thank you Dr. Gilligan. >> Any other questions Daniel? >> That is it on my end.
Thank you. >> Okay. Excellent. I’m not seeing any additional ones here so again I want to thank Doctors Li and Gilligan for being here today, for going through overview of both of these programs, you’ve provided a rich depth of information to help get someone started on making a decision.
I want to encourage anyone who might be interested in our next webinar coming up in two weeks, Wednesday the 7th I believe that will be. We’re going to do another of our cool tools, this is cool tools number four, it’s conducting career research and we’re going to do a deep dive into some of the greatest tools that are available that most people don’t use and that is the O*NET Online, the BLS which incorporates my next career move.
It’s government driven, it’s research, it’s stuff we all pay for because we pay taxes yet we don’t use it. So we’re going to be diving deep into that. Again down the road we will be diving deeper into each of these programs and so I’ll invite you to keep an eye out for those and please join us once again.
Again thank you, Dr. Gilligan. Thank you Dr. Li. We truly appreciate you being here today. And thank you for those who’re on the phone, participating with us today. If you have any additional questions please feel free to send those along to us. You can send anything of course to the career center at trident4careers@trident.edu.
Also you can email my cell or Daniel. However, if you are interested in additional admissions information you can simply send an email to admissions@trident.edu. If you want specific information on the programs note not admissions related, but something related to finding out more in depth information on either of these programs, we’ve provided the link for email for Dr.
Gilligan which is heidi.gilligan@trident.edu and for Dr. Li which is wenling.li@trident.edu. You will be receiving a copy of the slide share or all of these slides so you will have all these links. We will probably send you other links as well for example a link to the website because that gives you some additional information on both of these programs and potentially some other resources as well, especially the new core series of webinars that are available for those in the Ph.D and Ed.D programs.
So once again thank you so very much for participating, we look forward to seeing you next time or having you participate next time, until then, everyone have.
Video Transcript Disclaimer
Please be advised that this transcription was made from a video recording. The content of the transcription reflects the words spoken on the video, without grammatical modifications. Unfortunately, Trident can not guarantee the quality of the transcript, as a number of factors can impact the final accuracy of the content. The provided text is to the best of our skill and ability, and the tools we have available.
About Trident University
Founded in 1998, Trident University International (Trident) is a leading online post-secondary university serving adult learners. Trident developed the Trident Learning Model, which employs case-based learning in an online setting to teach real-world relevant critical thinking skills to enhance student’s lives and careers. Trident offers high-quality bachelors, masters, and doctoral degree programs, led by a qualified faculty team, over 80% of whom have doctoral degrees. Visit www.trident.edu, Trident’s Facebook page, or call at to learn more about Trident’s wide range of program offerings.
