In Their Own Voices: The Online Doctoral Student Experience Pre-Candidacy and Post-Candidacy

Distance learners’ drop rates have surpassed students in face-to-face classrooms by 20% and fewer than 50% of online students finish their courses with the majority of attrition occurring during post-candidacy during the independent, research and writing of the dissertation. Program structure and a sense of community embedded within online courses pre-candidacy are typically absent after candidacy. The study sought to understand the online doctoral student experience of online doctoral students with a major in social science enrolled in limited residency programs. The concurrent, mixed methods study utilized 22 doctoral connectedness survey respondents, eight semistructured interviews, and four document reviews of dissertation guides from institutions of those interviewed during the study. The findings indicated that doctoral students in online, limited residency programs experienced times of isolation primarily at the post-candidacy stage. The doctoral candidate situated in an autonomous and isolated environment no longer has faculty presence to facilitate structured learning opportunities and peer interactions within communities of inquiry and practice, two conceptual models discussed in the study. Socialization throughout each stage of a doctoral program is necessary for doctoral students to balance their needs for support, guidance, and direction as they transition to the independent stage of research and writing and develop competence as a scholars. Scholarly socialization and the networked faculty-to-student and student-to-student interactions align with the theoretical framework of an ecological system which places the distance learner as the focal person within any online learning environment