Educational Administration
Doctor of Education (EdD)
Online Degree Program

Public Policy reviews educational policy from a micro and macro perspective. It reviews the general concepts of public policy and looks at the socioeconomic context of the school as it relates to economics, demographics, politics, culture, and values. It also analyzes the policy process, the key players, and the typical issues involved, as well as a historical perspective to aid in understanding the current education reform climate.

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Examine the dimensions of educational policy in the United States.
• Analyze the politics of policy as it plays out at the local, state, and federal levels.
• Evaluate the progress of educational conditions and issues as they become translated into policy proposals, enacted, implemented and evaluated.
• Explore the evolution of educational policy through the major periods of American educational history.

Legal Aspects of Education covers the historical and contemporary legal issues affecting the organization and administration of schools in America. School safety, cyberbullying, copyright law and use of media are covered extensively. Additionally, isolation and restraining laws involving students with disabilities, landmark cases involving equal pay, strip searches, freedom of expression, truancy and school vouchers—virtually every topic of concern to today’s educators—is covered with integrated cases.

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, you will be able to:

• Analyze sources of law that affect the administration and operation of schools.
• Assess the importance of the No Child Left Behind (NCLB) Act.
• Examine the history of equal access for children with disabilities.
• Judge due process standards and employment discrimination.
• Consider the history and significance of school desegregation.

Analysis of Current Issues in Education explores a wide range of topics in education such as governance, teaching and learning, student life, faculty, finances, public policy, fundraising, and innovations. Emphasis is placed on uncovering the underlying social and ideological philosophies that lie below the surface of each issue.

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Analyze how higher education tends to increase differences according to one’s advantages or disadvantages in race, income, and early educational opportunities.
• Compare and contrast academic ideals and institutional realities.
• Describe the “shared governance” model usually associated with colleges and universities.
• Evaluate the issues of privatization in higher education.
• Detail how higher education is part of a continual, complex dynamic of the American ritual of “give and take.”
• Compare and contrast the “price” and “cost” of a college education.

Organizational Behavior and Adaptive Leadership is the study of organizational behavior, how it impacts educational leadership, and how leaders can embrace the challenges of school reform. The course highlights the paradigms of the evolution of educational thought, organizational theory, human capital and decision-making that educational leaders face in a hypercompetitive, global educational environment.

Course Objectives

• Examine the relationship between leadership and school reform.
• Determine the best knowledge and understanding of organizational behavior in initiating school reform.
• Propose how adaptive leaders can be effective in times of rapid change, uncertainty, and ambiguity.
• Explore the vast knowledge of the mainstreams of organizational behavior and the human dimension in organizations.
• Determine how to create an effective climate and culture to bring about effective change, motivation, leadership, and teamwork.

Educational Research is a required course completed by all Doctoral students to prepare them for the development and writing of a Proposal and Dissertation. The course presents a balanced presentation of quantitative and qualitative research. It examines the fundamental issues of research so that students learn how to begin to conduct research as well as to read and evaluate research studies. By using the concepts and research techniques presented in this course, students and faculty will work together to develop the student’s knowledge of the Dissertation process.

Course Objectives

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Develop skills in interpreting and evaluating research.
• Examine the steps in the research process for a variety of quantitative and qualitative research designs.
• Acquire a realistic perspective on the process of research and the selection of specific research designs by following fictional researchers in their work.
• Demonstrate an understanding of the research process by introducing many of the research methods, research design, and process requirements of the dissertation process.

Quantitative Methods in Educational Research is designed to prepare students to understand the elements of research from the standpoint of both design and data analysis. To do this, the course presents information enabling students to judge the research of others and to design their own high-quality investigations. This course will also enable students to read, interpret, and critically evaluate quantitative results. From this, students will be able to solve problems and make knowledge-based decisions.

Course Objectives:

Upon successful completion of this course, students will be able to:

• Examine the different kinds of quantitative analyses in educational research.
• Demonstrate an understanding of descriptive, associational and inferential statistics.
• Analyze aspects of research design including surveys, sampling, experimental design, reliability and validity, regression and factor analysis.
• Develop skills in program evaluation to investigate the efficiency, effectiveness, and/or impact of organized interventions meant to bring about change.

Doctor of Education in Educational Administration candidates will complete a written Comprehensive Examination. This final requirement will be in the form of an essay examination, based upon major areas of education. Students are asked to integrate course information, professional experience, and outside source materials into a comprehensive framework reflecting their accumulated knowledge in the field of education.

Objective

The Comprehensive Examination is intended to test students’ knowledge related to the qualifying and core courses and area of specialization courses. Learners are expected to demonstrate comprehensive knowledge: facility with a wide range of texts and the ability to draw on main ideas of important thinkers and writers in their fields of study, linking them together in interesting and relevant ways to other scholars working in the field. In addition, students are expected to demonstrate depth of knowledge: the ability to engage, critically and substantively, with texts that both respect and interrogate the students’ claims, positions, and arguments. Finally, students are expected to demonstrate advanced academic skills, including (but not limited to) the ability to develop and sustain a line of argument that is coherent and supported with viable, text-based evidence, while writing clear scholarly prose.

The Proposal focuses on the preparation of research. This includes conceptual tools, techniques for conducting scientific research, evaluation of the value of research proposals and planning and executing research projects. The student will learn how to organize knowledge within his/her field for presentation in a standardized, scholarly fashion. The student will develop the formal proposal based on established doctoral guidelines and under the supervision of the graduate review committee. This course requires that the student present an acceptable proposal for review and analysis in lieu of a final course examination.

The Dissertation and Oral Defense can begin after GRM 712 has been successfully completed and approved. The candidate will develop and compile an original work, demonstrating ability to add to the body of knowledge in his or her field for presentation to and acceptance by the University. After the student’s dissertation is approved and bound, the candidate is responsible for appearing before their Dissertation Committee in person for the purpose of orally responding to committee member questions as they pertain to the candidate’s dissertation.