June 2018 – Virtual Canuck

I am getting pretty exited about the summer solstice and the 40th ANNUAL North Country Fair. The North Country Fair is celebrated along the shores of the Lesser Slave Lake – the largest lake in Alberta. I moved there in 1971 with 6 dear friends and a $600 investment to be a “one seventh equal and undivided owner” of a 160 Acres (65 Hcts.) of Northern Alberta bush, meadows and a 4 bedroom house! We were “back to the land.”

We always made an effort to reclaim the Summer Solstice as a focal celebration of the gift of being able to spend a summer in the Boreal Forest. We had great ‘bush (and hiding from rain) parties’ before the Fair. In 1979, we decided to do a ‘real folk festival’. We first partnered with the Joussard Sports Association to charge a few bucks at the gate, hire some bands, talked our friends into doing something ‘alternative’ – AND add fireworks, sports events and of course new and emerging musicians. The Fair became known by the some of the locals as ‘Hippy Daze” and generations of kids have grown up camping at the Fair.We never lost money in the early days – but never made much either! Later the North Country School added its own benefits and obligations!

Lesser Slave Lake 40 KM North of Edmonton

The most incredible story of the NCF must be the purchase of the land. 1400 acres of the Driftpile River Valley and adjacent slopes. Now the Fair had a permanent home. Every year I look across the North Saskatchewan River at the Edmonton Folk Music Festival and much as I love the music, the staggering number of volunteers and heavy equipment needed to move them in and out every year (for a weekend affair), makes me VERY grateful for a permanent site.

As a 40^th Fair celebration/archive I created the shell of TikiWiki at northcountryfair.ab.ca. I thought that generations of North Country Folks – including kids and grandkids, (being net-savy) would be dying to upload all their photos and stories – NOT. I should have learned the lesson that it a lot easier to set up a ‘new tech’ solution than to populate it!. Wikipedia shines as the great exemplar, but alas, the number of special purpose or spin off Wikis that match its breadth and participation are VERY few – like none!.

But I don’t feel badly though. I learned how to set up and then move a wiki site and even the skeleton Wiki that I have created at northcountryfair.ab.ca has lots of interesting stuff.

On top of that I get to go and work the ‘History” tent at the Fair and hear about (and maybe tell a few) amazing stories that have evolved over 40 annual celebrations of the Solstice in the Northern Alberta bush.

I’m pumped!!

New Book from AUPress – An Online Doctorate for Researching Professionals

cover I was pleased to receive in the post a hard copy of a new book in the Issues in Distance Education book series, for which I continue to serve as the series editor. Now of course you can read all of the books in this series as they are available for download under Creative Commons licensing. But it is nice to hold paper copy and a purchase ($39.95 Can.) makes the press and the authors happy (think $$$).

An Online Doctorate for Researching Professionals: Program Design, Implementation, and Evaluation by Swapna Kumar and Kara Dawson is a great book on a very hot topic. I would characterize this monograph as a scholarly case study. This means that it is in large part a detailed explanation of a 5 year old Education Doctorate (EdD) program from the University of Florida. The book begins with a historical review of function and form of the doctorate program in Universities. I was surprised to hear that the very first Doctor of Education program was begun here in Canada at the University of Toronto. But it was soon followed by many doctorate programs – in professional subjects such as medicine, dentistry, law and of course education.

Kumar and Dawson make the point that a professional degree(s) exists to train professionals to make contribution and conduct research into the profession and to the citizens that they serve. It was not then, and is not now, designed to train students to be full time researcher scholars nor faculty members at Universities – this is what the PhD is designed for. This all makes sense EXCEPT that the public and many students perceive the PhD to be a “better’ degree, so the pressure from students, the public and the Universities to move towards offering PhD programs- regardless of the need of either the academy or the profession.

I note the topic is hot, not only for this contention of what a professional doctorate is, how it differs from a PhD but also because of degree inflation. Many professionals desire (or are required) to have the advanced training and the status of a doctoral title. As noted the professional doctorate in education is hardly a new degree, but at least when I began doctoral studies in 1987, there were no EdD or PhD programs available in Canada that one could complete without ‘residence’ attendance on campus. The EdD program that I worked in and helped design at Athabasca University was one of the first to enter this domain, but it was soon followed by many other programs including the subject of this case study.

The first thing I did after opening the book was jump to the chapter “Dissertations in the Online Environment” The dissertation is a defining characteristic of any doctoral program and the most challenging to deliver, to support and to complete. It is not particularly difficult to design a program of courses that are delivered online or that use some blended approach. But the dissertation process is individualized. This not only challenges the student to design and undertake quality, original research but also challenges the faculty as a great deal of one-to-one support and mentoring is required of the supervisor and then a committee of examiners. The economy of scale of courseware all of a sudden disappears and faculty can be overwhelmed with the work- especially as the number of candidates/faculty creeps into two digits.

The book is chock full of examples of ‘good practices” and a description of the research tools used to validate them that emerged and were implemented in the UF program. I should be pleased to note that the pedagogical approach is grounded in Randy Garrison, Walter Archer and my- Community of Inquiry model – with the addition of Shea’s ‘learner presence’. In addition the program focuses on building community (and measuring it using Rovai’s (2002) community instrument. However, these days I am more intrigued with ways to develop self-directed and self-driven learning programs. But perhaps that is too much to hope for, given the intense context and content to be mastered and the high expectations of doctoral studies. Indeed, the authors provide a quote from one student who notes that they were prepared for the intellectual rigour of the program, but blown away by the “opportunity to work alongside such incredible peers that has been more rewarding and fulfilling than I could have imagined.” This intense community benefits (and is nurtured) in an entry ‘boot camp’, annual F2F meetings and regular synchronous and asynchronous classes. Perhaps the search for of a recognized, self directed, self-managed, MOOC-like doctorate is Quixotic!

To summarize, this a great text and I am proud to see it added to the AUPress Issues in Distance Education Series. It is a scholarly exposition of an innovative doctoral program and as importantly it validates the findings with survey, completion data and examples from the cohorts. It also serves as fine example of the type of study and reflection that should accompany all new educational innovations.

Congrats to Swapna and Kara!