I began my search for a suitable doctoral program while still on active duty with the U.S. Air Force. I had hoped to find a knowledge management related program that could be completed primarily online (with limited residency). Not finding anything like this, I enrolled in a program that appeared to offer some opportunity to deeply focus on issues relevant to collaborative knowledge creation, collaborative learning, and knowledge diffusion through populations. Having looked at programs in sociology, anthropology, psychology, information science, and several other fields, I finally chose the Doctorate in Computing Technology in Education (DCTE) program at Nova Southeastern University's Graduate School of Computer and Information Sciences. While not ideal for my goals, it was relevant and — significantly — was offered in a format I could participate in while on active duty.

DCTE prepares educators and technologists to serve as leaders in fields that apply information technologies to learning and the development of competence. DCTE is designed for completion in a minimum of three years, for those enrolled full time. (On average, those who complete the Ph.D. take significantly longer.) I completed the coursework under the institute option, in which students gathered for one six-day residency (institute week) at the NSU campus each term, with the balance of each term consisting of Internet-mediated research, individual project work and scholarly collaboration via the Internet.

After completing my doctoral coursework (the following courses), I began the dissertation research process in January 2006. I took a break, due to a vocational shift, and will resume dissertation research in 2008.

My completed (all quite successfully!) doctoral courses include:

DCTE 700 Research Methods
DCTE 720 Human-Computer Interaction
DCTE 730 Online Learning Environments
DCTE 740 Telecommunications
DCTE 750 Educational Database Systems
DCTE 760 Instruction Delivery Systems
DCTE 770 Courseware Design
DCTE 799 Information Age Literacies
DCTE 800 Project in Research Methods
DCTE 820 Project in Human-Computer Interaction
DCTE 850 Project in Educational Database Systems
DCTE 870 Project in Courseware Design
DCTE 899 Project in Information Age Literacies

Official course descriptions are viewable on the program curriculum page.

37 semester hours of the coursework were applied to the en route educational specialist (Ed.S., 2005) degree.

My previous degrees include the MS in information resource management (1991), from the Air Force Institute of Technology, and the BA in psychology — with minors in natural science and philosophy (1981), from the University of Louisville. I also completed a year of graduate coursework in systems theory and applications at the Systems Science Institute of the University of Louisville. The odd duck is my certificate in architectural design, from the Louisville Technical Institute.