Digitalization of Higher Degree Research (HRD) and Its Benefit to Postgraduate Researchers

Graduate Schools offer supports to enhance and improve the graduate skills development of their postgraduate research community not only in their research but also in preparing them for their future careers. The European University Association Council for Doctoral Education has identified the digitalization of doctoral education as necessary to the future to fully globalize the graduate school offerings. This vision is aligned, for example, to several of the objectives in Dublin City University 2017-2022 Strategic Plan. Online supports go towards the development of DCU as a global university allowing us to attract, and to provide aid to, research students who are studying primarily outside of Ireland. The same structured support also benefits staff who are involved in the life cycle of a research student. Therefore, it is important to assess the needs of our graduate researchers in terms of online supports and to provide them with such tools to ascertain if their needs can/are being met. Hence, this chapter begins this journey by determining what online resources our doctoral community use to move their studies forward and then follows on to measure the value of one resource “DoctoralNet,” which offers comprehensive support to such students. This chapter discusses surveyed material, yielding a positive message that our doctoral education requires such digital resources to meet their (students') educational needs.

Knowledge Visualization for Research Design

This chapter presents a case of information and communication technology use in doctoral research processes. In particular, it presents the use of the Idea Puzzle software as a knowledge visualization tool for research design at the University of Auckland. The chapter begins with a review of previous contributions on knowledge visualization and research design. It then presents the Idea Puzzle software and its application at the University of Auckland. In addition, the chapter discusses the results of a large-scale survey conducted on the Idea Puzzle software in 71 higher education institutions as well as its first usability testing at the University of Auckland. The chapter concludes that the Idea Puzzle software stimulates visual integrative thinking for coherent research design in the light of Philosophy of Science.

The Use of ICT in Researcher Development

This chapter provides a case study highlighting the importance of ICT use in researcher development, exploring both training pedagogy and ICT skill development, utilizing the authors' experience of managing and delivering ICT-based researcher development across a wide range of disciplines for researchers, including part-time and distance researchers who conduct their research away from campus. Participant feedback and examples of best practice will be highlighted alongside potential challenges to encourage readers to confidently utilize a wide variety of ICT in order to create innovative researcher development material to best support the next generation of researchers.

Doctoral Platforms and Apps for Professional Development and Student Support

Using the experience derived across multiple universities, this chapter endeavors to discuss how ICT can play a role in the larger evolution of higher education, as well as with helping doctoral students complete their research and writing requirements. Practitioner research underpins the discussion of two rounds of research centered on ICTs role in equalizing disparity in financial and social capital between students and taking those solutions to scale. The first round (2012 – present) focuses on the ICT suite of services as they develop, and the second (2015 – present) investigates how, and in what ways, the interdependence between the Deans' office and the subscription business play a part in student adoption and usage. The findings suggest that a willingness to develop interdependent solutions between ICT developers and postgraduate studies will be instrumental in bringing services for doctoral students to scale.

A Framework for E-Mentoring in Doctoral Education

The upward trend in online graduate degrees, the mobility of graduate students, and the increase in the number of dissertations completed at a distance from universities poses several challenges for faculty who supervise research virtually, students being mentored virtually, and institutions invested in the quality of doctoral education. At the same time, emerging communication technologies present new opportunities for mentoring approaches that build upon those used in traditional on-campus environments. Based on qualitative research with 29 graduates who completed their dissertations at a distance, this chapter presents a framework for the e-mentoring of research and dissertations that encompasses strategies and support at the institutional, mentor, small group, and mentee levels.

Don't Be a Ghost Who Drops Grades in Blackboard

This chapter presents the results of a program evaluation conducted to assess the effectiveness of an online doctoral program in educational leadership at a Research One University from the perspective of its students. Feedback was sought from over 80 currently enrolled students. The study focused on three aspects of the program, namely faculty social and cognitive presence. Recent changes to the program that address these areas include the creation of a thematic group model that clusters students based on academic interests over the last 2 years of the program, extensive revisions to coursework, the adoption of a problem-based dissertation model, and the use of social media and an online community portal to promote student engagement. The results indicate that although students had encountered positive experiences in all three areas, online doctoral students continue to need focused individual mentoring in order to experience success.

Digital Higher Degree Research (HDR) Scholarly Support and Community Building

In this chapter, the development of a digital support system for higher degree research (HDR) student training and development is conversed in the context of the young faculty of medicine at Macquarie University in Sydney, Australia. First, the case and the issues that need to be addressed in providing digital support to the HDR cohort are discussed. Then, the development of the digital platform is presented. Finally, an overall reflection is made with respect to the effectiveness and future directions in implementing the digital platform with a focus on developing a scholarly community of support for the faculty's higher degree research students, supervisors, and the wider research community.

Big Data and Doctoral Research

This chapter explores opportunities and challenges that are presented to doctoral candidates (and indeed all researchers) through access to big data. The authors consider what big data is and what it is not, and how working with big data differs from traditional research design and analysis. They provide examples of the opportunities that big data offers in terms of the combination of diverse data sets, sources, and types and how it can provide new perspectives on inter-disciplinary challenges. They also highlight some of the challenges for the use of big data, both for the individual researcher and for institutions. The authors advocate for the need to embrace these challenges but without foregoing data integrity and the expert use and interpretation of data.

Using ICTs to Check Plagiarism in PhD Research Works in Nigeria

The proliferation of plagiarism in African universities has rationalized the adoption of various strategies to mitigate or eradicate it. In Nigeria particularly, computer-assisted approaches such as the Turnitin software have been appropriated to tackle this challenge. Many Nigerian universities have adopted Turnitin to ameliorate the quality of PhD research produced in their faculties. Although lauded in many quarters, this recourse to ICTs to check plagiarism has seen multiple challenges, some of which include poor anti-plagiarism policies, fallible anti-plagiarism software, and the Nigerian factor, among others. Using observations and secondary sources, this chapter critically explores these challenges. The chapter provides a conceptual definition of plagiarism and plagiarism detection systems; it shows how plagiarism is affecting PhD research in Nigerian universities and explores the place of ICTs in anti-plagiarism policies adopted by Nigerian universities. The chapter ends by examining the prospects and challenges of using ICTs to mitigate PhD student plagiarism in Nigeria.

Reconceptualizing Postgraduate Research

The professional inquiry (a researcher training and development course) was introduced into the Master of Education program at Massey University, New Zealand in 2014 as a practitioner-based alternative to the research thesis pathway. In contrast with traditional, independent, time intensive models of postgraduate research supervision, the authors developed and implemented an innovative blended learning model of postgraduate research training and development to ensure the growing demand of future, predominantly distance, students would be met. The online, blended model developed and discussed here within the discipline of Education has the potential to be utilized across different disciplines and postgraduate programs including those at doctoral level. In its fifth year of delivery, the online community has grown from nine students and seven specialist academic advisors in the first cohort to 45 students and 27 academics in the current offering, ensuring an accessible and equitable research learning experience for all students.