Ph.D. in Accessible Human-Centered Computing and Policy

This seminar addresses professional writing and presentation skills needed by many doctoral level professionals in education. Students analyze and evaluate grant proposals, published articles, and presentations for structure, word choice, voice, and content. They construct short manuscripts that adhere to the American Psychological Association style format. In addition, students prepare media-enhanced presentations for professional audiences, including parent groups, teachers, school administrators, and professional conferences.

This seminar is first in a series and provides a forum for doctoral students to explore and discuss beliefs and practices related to teaching undergraduate and graduate university education courses; topics include course design, course preparation and presentation, use of appropriate technology and media, organizing effective participatory learning, inclusive and equitable practices, developing and using effecting teaching strategies and standards-based assessment techniques, and mentoring for reflective teaching/learning. In addition to seminars, the doctoral student will complete a minimum of 20 (twenty) hours of field experience consisting of classroom observation and conferencing with university faculty.

The main purpose of the Advanced Research Design I course is to facilitate student's integration of theory, research design, and measurement issues with knowledge of statistical procedures needed to plan, accomplish, and evaluate qualitative and quantitative research projects in speech, language and hearing sciences. Students will develop their ability to locate, review, and critically evaluate research studies. The course will cover the proper format for research proposals and reports, measurement issues, and sampling. In addition, the student is introduced to quantitative and qualitative approaches to research. The student will develop critical analysis abilities using the criteria of validity and reliability as explicated in experimental design principles. Specifically, the course will focus on (1) Identifying and formulating research questions, (2) Completing a literature search and literature review, (3) non-experiment (qualitative) research design (case studies, survey research), (3) experimental research and levels of evidence, (4) research participants and sampling, (5) data analysis: describing different types of data, (6) data analysis: inferential statistics, (7) research outcomes.

This course is intended to develop professional competencies in three areas: (a) knowledge and use of the following approaches to research: experimental, quasiexperimental, causal-comparative, qualitative, and correlational research, and (b) develop knowledge of experimental research design options, (c) development of formal research proposals. This course will address major concepts, issues, and techniques of quantitative research methods.

This course provides credit for individual student research projects at the dissertation stage, conducted under approved faculty supervision. Students may register for 1-9 credits per semester.