Northcentral University

EarnestMEDU7002-12

NORTHCENTRAL UNIVERSITY

ASSIGNMENT COVER SHEET

Learner: Melissa Webb Earnest

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EDU 7002

Eve Kaczmarek

Educational Research Methodology

Assignment 12 – Reflective Look at Ed.D. v. Ph.D.

Learner Comments: Since this is a reflective piece, I hope you don’t mind the use of the word “I” throughout the essay.

Faculty Use Only

Personal Reflections on the Choice of Two Designs of Doctoral Degrees

After completing four online courses with Northcentral University and being instructed on the difference between the Ed.D. and Ph.D. programs, I definitely feel I have made the correct choice in selecting the applied doctorate. Because I have been in the field of education as both a classified and a certified employee for a total of 23 years, I feel confident in my desire to research and apply what I learn to a specific area of interest. Over the past few years the state of Kentucky and my school district have placed much emphasis on the use of the Internet as a communication tool. In my role as the District Webmaster, it has fallen to me to develop and publish our district Web site as well as train other staff members in the four schools in my district and in the area technology center in the use of our Web host software.

As more and more requirements have been added to our use of a district Web site, such as publishing the status of training for our school-based decision-making councils and our financial reports and vendor list online, I have spent a great deal of time and effort in producing an Internet presence for our district and for our schools. As I trained individual teachers and small groups of staff members, I was often asked about the usage of such sites. Since this role was just as new to me as it was to them, I did not feel I could offer a very good explanation for why we were spending the time and effort to have an online presence, other than to state the Kentucky Department of Education required us to have certain documentation online and the superintendent wanted all schools to have a presence online as a form of communication to the parents and community members. Due to this question and my inadequate answer, I decided this would be a research-worthy issue to study and began talking with my various mentors about the possibility of using this subject matter as the focus for my doctoral research.

Although it is exciting to make new discoveries, as is usually the focus of a Ph.D. program, I feel more inclined to focus on an aspect of education which is already in place, but under-researched as to its effectiveness. In my various roles within the local school district, I have the opportunity to make a difference by adding to the knowledge of an area near and dear to my own heart, educational technology. Given my personal background with a degree in computer science and several jobs, which entailed the use of technology, I felt this experience, coupled with my educational degrees, would put me in the best position to study an issue in education, which dealt with an aspect of technology. Going back to the original question of whether or not the use of the Internet truly was making an impact on students or families, and having guidance from my mentors, I felt drawn to select an area of research which has not been thoroughly studied.

With the assistance of my latest mentor, Dr. Eve Kaczmarek, I re-focused my topic to a very precise application of educational technology, to study whether or not the immediate access to student information by parents through the use of a district- and state-supplied Web-based program known as a portal was impacting students’ grades and attendance in any way. Of course, my goal would be to discover the efforts by our schools and teachers to provide this information and immediate access are a positive factor in the success of students. However, as is known with any type of research, the opposite may be discovered instead; in other words, maybe all this focus and effort on allowing parents instantaneous access to information does not impact the students at all, or even worse, in a negative manner. Because this is a very precise question which needs answering in my mind, and because districts and states could very well focus their efforts, time and even funding towards more effective uses of technology, I felt it in my best interest to pursue the Ed.D. program. Hopefully what I discover in the end will have an impact on education, not only for my local district and my own state, but also for other districts, states and even countries across the world.

To me, the whole idea of pursuing an Ed.D. or a Ph.D. is to have influence on some area of concern in education. Planning, researching, and bringing all the elements together in the form of a dissertation, and perhaps later as a book, in order to help someone else is the true goal for me. At this point I believe the Ed.D., applied style of program best suits my desires and my goals, both personally and professionally.