Schedule & Course Descriptions
Our Global Executive Doctor of Education (EdD) program can be completed in approximately 25 months and allows students to remain fully employed while pursuing their doctorate.
The program combines online classes with nine 1-2 week on-campus residential sessions over a two-year (25 month) period. Participants will travel for 9 intensive class sessions in Los Angeles, Hong Kong, the Middle East, and Helsinki.
Students should expect to spend at least 12-15 hours per week on homework and online activities during the online portions of the program. Also, additional time requirements can be expected during the latter half of the program when completing the Dissertation of Practice. These demands will vary depending on the topic, project methodology, and geographic location of each student’s dissertation.
The residential sessions will be intensive and will require all-day attendance and availability. We strongly discourage students from bringing their families. The time commitment will be very rigorous and leave little or no time for family. Accommodations are allocated for individuals only, and any accompanying family members would need to make separate housing and dining arrangements.
Detailed schedules and information about each session will be provided in advance of the program’s start date. Week-long sessions will generally involve 6 days of scheduled activities (Monday through Saturday). Two-week sessions will involve 12 days of scheduled activities (Monday through Saturday of each week with Sunday off). Activities will include in-class discussions, lectures and learning activities, student work groups, field trips, readings, and co-curricular events.
Sample Program Schedule
Year 1
Semester 1 – July-September
- EDUC 619 Framing Educational Leadership in a Global Context (4)
- EDUC 620 The Fundamentals of Creativity, Innovation, and Entrepreneurship (2)
Semester 2 – September-December
- EDUC 623 Understanding Research that Informs Educational Leadership (3)
- EDUC 624 Educational Organizations: Governance and Finance I (2)
- EDUC 628 Educational Organizations: Governance and Finance II (2)
Semester 3 – January-March
- EDUC 631 Locating Educational Performance Problems (3)
- EDUC 626 Fostering Entrepreneurship in Educational Systems (2)
Semester 4 – March-June
- EDUC 627 Education Performance Problems: Role of Learning (3)
- EDUC 723 Evaluating and Assessing Educational System Outcomes (3)
Year 2
Semester 5 –June-September
- EDUC 724 Creating Policy Alternatives for Educational Settings (3)
- EDUC 790 Research (1)
- EDUC 629 Dissertation of Practice: Context Analysis (3)
Semester 6 – September-December
- EDUC 728 Complexity of Educational Systems: Emerging Ideas, Emerging Markets (3)
- EDUC 726 Making Choices: Deciding Among Policy Alternatives (3)
- EDUC 794A Dissertation of Practice (1)
Semester 7 – December-March
- EDUC 727 Implementing Policy in Educational Systems (3)
- EDUC 764B Dissertation of Practice (1)
- EDUC 733 Data Analysis and Presentation of Findings (3)
Semester 8 – March-June
- EDUC 729 Assessing Policy Impact in Educational Settings (3)
- EDUC 764C Dissertation of Practice (1)
Year 3
Semester 9 – June-August
- EDUC 764D Dissertation of Practice (1)
Course Descriptions
Problem Solving: Equipping leaders to use theory and evidence to ask the right questions, identify underlying causes and solve systemic problems.
EDUC 619: Framing Educational Leadership in the Global Context – Introduces fundamental skills related to problem solving and communication.
EDUC 623: Understanding Research that Informs Educational Leadership – Provides a framework for understanding, interpreting and applying education research. Specific topics include: publication venues; basic research designs (experiments, modeling); reading research studies critically; understanding validity, reliability and other related constructs, and an introduction to evaluation research.
EDUC 631: Locating Performance Problems in Educational Organizations – Focuses attention on developing and implementing strategies for locating, solving and evaluating the solutions to performance problems in educational organizations.
EDUC 627: Education Performance Problems: Role of Learning – Provides an overview of contemporary perspectives on learning and motivation. This foundation will be used to provide an extension of the problem-solving model called gap analysis
Creativity and Innovation: Fostering and leading institutional cultures that promote creative thinking and innovative solutions.
EDUC 620: The Fundamentals of Creativity, Innovation and Entrepreneurship – Provides an overview of the creativity sequence, and explores the genesis of creative ideas – within an individual and within an organization.
EDUC 624 and EDUC 628: Educational Organizations: Governance and Finance Part 1 & 2 – This two-course sequence explores the impact of global transformations on educational systems’ governance and finance.
EDUC 626: Fostering Entrepreneurship in Educational Systems – Examines entrepreneurship opportunities for education, revisiting key skills and knowledge for educational leadership from the vantage point of the entrepreneur, and looking at how social entrepreneurship partners with educational systems to improve educational outcomes.
EDUC 728: Complexity of Educational System: Emerging Ideas, Emerging Markets – Examines a range of emerging markets in education, and efforts of institutions around the world to access new markets through collaborations and offshore endeavors. New ways of thinking about education will also be addressed, such as conceptualizing education as a global trade issue.
Advancing Policy: Leading long-term and scalable impact through effective policy development, implementation and assessment.
EDUC 724: Creating Policy Alternatives for Educational Settings – Students identify a policy problem and explore its context. Using that information as a base, students define a policy objective(s) and develop ideas for policy alternatives. This course also includes the first case study in which students work through an education policy challenge at the institutional level.
EDUC 726: Making Choices: Deciding Among Policy Alternatives – Building on the policy objective defined in the previous course, students choose the policy alternative most likely to attain their specified goals. Students explore models of decision-making including cost-benefit analysis, risk-benefit analysis, and decision analysis, as well as the impact of political environment. Students will choose a policy to address their selected policy challenge, assess the soundness of the decision, and communicate their choice to an identified group of stakeholders. This course will also introduce the second case study in which students will work through an education policy challenge at the system level.
EDUC 727: Implementing Policy in Educational Systems – Using the policy alternative developed in the previous course, students examine the implementation stage of the policy process, focusing on the effort, knowledge, and resources devoted to translating a policy decision into action. This course will also introduce the third case study in which students will work through an education policy challenge at the national level.
EDUC 729: Assessing Policy Impact in Educational Settings – Examines the assessment stage of the policy process, which explores how a policy has fared in action, including both its intended and unintended consequences. Assessment provides an important evaluative function that can inform whether a policy or policy dimensions should be continued, expanded, cut back, changed, or abandoned. This course will also introduce the final case study in which students will work through an education policy challenge at the multi-national level.
Dissertation Project
EDUC 723: Evaluating and Assessing Educational System Outcomes – Addresses the often-overlooked step in creating educational reform: evaluating impact. It introduces basic assessment concepts and strategies, and instructs students in the planning, design, implementation and application of an evaluation approach for a “real time” initiative.
EDUC 629: Dissertation of Practice: Context Analysis – During this course, students will become a member of a dissertation team, which will be guided by a faculty member. Each student will study an education-related problem and its organizational and historical context. The problem may be one the student brings from his or her region, or may be one provided by one of the program’s partner organizations. The determination of the suitability of a problem and the assignment of the student to a dissertation team is done at the discretion of the Program.
EDUC 733: Analyzing Data, Presenting Findings & Recommending Solutions – The course will equip students with the skills needed to generate chapter 4 on “findings” and the first part of chapter 5 on “solutions.” The course sequence will correspond to these two chapters beginning with Chapter 4, including the practical work of handling and analyzing data, determining findings, reporting them in narrative form and figuring out the most effective way to visually display key findings. The course will also address Chapter 5 and the task of developing a rationale for which findings are intended to address, identifying solutions and organizing them into a coherent set or approach.
Consulting Project – Students will diagnose, research potential solutions, and develop recommendations to a field-based educational problem. Each student is responsible for generating an individual dissertation, but they do this within a group working on closely related topics. The dissertation must be original and demonstrate the student’s ability to gather and analyze evidence for use in prescribing solutions to the problems and interventions identified.