Program Assessment
Strength | Suggestions
Making my mind up to go to the doctoral program was a tough decision. Since the beginning of my application to the master program, I have been wondering if I would like to continue my career in the scholarly community. The answer goes ˇ§YES!ˇ¨ In order to learn the IT doctoral programs in the US, I participated iin AECT in 2005. I met many doctoral students. Some of them are from our department, and some are students from Taiwan attending different doctoral programs in the US. After hearing their experiences, I chose the UGA IT program as my primary target. The main strengths are as follows.
Research activities carried out by UGA faculty and students are active in our area. Once I decided to be involved in the scholarly community, I understand research will be my main focus. The primary goal of our doctoral program is to engage students in current research and nurture future researchers in our field. Doubtless to say this is a great scholarly learning community. The faculty provides a great deal of information regarding the research activities. In EDIT 8990, we first got to learn various publication journals and conferences. We also had a chance to know researchersˇ¦ life after the completion of doctoral program. All in all, we are not in isolation, instead we have many experts guiding us on the path to the scholarly community.
Working collaboratively with faculty is one of the hallmarks. Opportunities such as teaching with faculty for graduate level courses and participating in the research projects frequently occur in our program, which align with the concepts of cognitive apprenticeship and learning by doing. I find it particularly beneficial to my learning style, because I prefer to learn new things by experiencing them.
To help us solely concentrate on our study without worrying about the financial aspect, the program gives us a great financial support by finding us either a research assistantship or a teaching assistantship. In addition, the work for assistantships is relevant to our future career in the scholarly community. Therefore, we develop our skills at the same time. Even though sometimes life is busy and stressful, I believe sweat and tears will be paying off in the upcoming days.
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As one of members in our learning community, it is critical to make some suggestions to constantly improve our program. Academic seminars in writing conceptual framework paper and literature review can be very valuable. In my first year, I have taken two qualitative courses. Every time the instructors discussed grand theories for conceptual framework such as postmodernism and positivism, I felt lost. From the articles that I read in our area, none of them mentioned the type of theories that the instructors talked about in the class. In terms of writing literature review, it seems there is no universal guideline across disciplines. Therefore, having academic seminars will be helpful to consolidate our understanding of writing conceptual framework and literature review sections in our research projects.
Another suggestion that I would like to make is to open more advanced and in depth courses on the side of educational psychology. I believe understanding various learning theories and psychology of learning are the cornerstones in our field. The courses such as EPSY 6800 and EPSY 8180 are great courses in terms of their breadth. However, it will be more beneficial for us to have deeper understanding of various learning perspectives and further strengthen our theoretical background.
In addition to the two suggestions that I made above, I would like to propose a way to enhance the mentor-mentee system in our program. I believe that the mentor-mentee system is a great way to create rich learning activities within our community. Some mentors and mentees work out well, however, some don't. In order to strength the mentors and mentees system and provide adequate help to newcomers, I think it might be better to put students in different years in a group, which we call it family. In other words, one group (family) will consist of students from first year, second year, third year, and fourth year. This way can increase chances for those who want to solicit help from othes in our program rather than just to ask help from only one person.
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