TY - JOUR
T1 - Improving professional IT doctorate completion rates
AU - Burmeister, Oliver
N1 - Includes bibliographical references.
PY - 2015
Y1 - 2015
N2 - Professional doctorates in Information Technology (IT) have been a relatively recent phenomenon, giving IT professionals career management choices not previously available to them. However, successful completion rates are the lowest of all disciplines. Completed doctorates rate in quality equivalent to PhDs, and retention has been identified as a major obstacle to completion. This qualitative study, involving 44 semi-structured interviews with students, supervisors and institutional support personnel, investigated the obstacles. Amongst the strategies discovered to improve completion rates were retention, student engagement with supervisors, feedback on progress, student engagement in the course, and student involvement in institutional communities of practice.
AB - Professional doctorates in Information Technology (IT) have been a relatively recent phenomenon, giving IT professionals career management choices not previously available to them. However, successful completion rates are the lowest of all disciplines. Completed doctorates rate in quality equivalent to PhDs, and retention has been identified as a major obstacle to completion. This qualitative study, involving 44 semi-structured interviews with students, supervisors and institutional support personnel, investigated the obstacles. Amongst the strategies discovered to improve completion rates were retention, student engagement with supervisors, feedback on progress, student engagement in the course, and student involvement in institutional communities of practice.
KW - Career management
KW - Community of practice
KW - Postgraduate education
KW - Retention
U2 - 10.3127/ajis.v19i0.1073
DO - 10.3127/ajis.v19i0.1073
M3 - Article
SN - 1326-2238
VL - 19
SP - 55
EP - 70
JO - Australasian Journal of Information Systems
JF - Australasian Journal of Information Systems
ER -