Creating the Online Learning Community for Distributed Education Doctoral Programs

Many colleges and universities now readily embrace the Internet as a viable distributed learning delivery model. As such, the Internet is a valuable tool to attract the highest quality students to an institution’s academic programs. However, while this may work well at the undergraduate or master’s level, many institutions maintain a required residential or internship requirement as part of a doctoral program. This interactive learning community is a vital aspect of a quality doctorate program. This paper presents a means to create an online learning community to replicate the residential graduate student experience. This goal is accomplished through the collaborative use of videoconferencing, video/web streaming, and communication applications. The paper also illustrates two examples from a Modeling and Simulation and an Instruction Design and Technology doctoral level curriculum