Online Ed.D. Curriculum

The online Ed.D. in leadership and learning in organizations curriculum prepares students to identify, assess, and resolve organizational challenges. Students will learn how to improve operations in organizations across industries while focusing on three key competency areas:

  • Leadership and organizational development
  • Data and analytics
  • Learning and design

Students will also develop leadership skills and an in-depth understanding in the following areas:

  • Organizational change and systemic improvement
  • Different methods of inquiry and analysis
  • Issues of practice from a variety of perspectives
  • Impact of systems and practice on learning
  • Methods to address organizational challenges
  • Context-specific individual and organizational learning
  • Organizational improvement, practice, and processes
  • Data analytics

Capstone

The program culminates with a capstone project that provides the opportunity to identify a problem of practice, conduct research, test a solution, and make recommendations for improvement. Students will work in small teams of two to three with the approval of a faculty adviser. More specifically, students will:

  • identify and analyze a problem of practice, challenge, or complex phenomenon in an external organization;
  • investigate the problem and provide multiple forms of evidence that demonstrate a need to focus on the problem in the particular organizational context;
  • design an intervention or process that implements a learning, improvement, or change to solve the problem;
  • develop a system of evaluation for the recommended intervention; and
  • share a detailed plan and evaluation strategy to address the organization’s challenges.

Course Scheduling

Live classes are held weekly during the evening, Monday through Thursday, and are mandatory. The day on which each course is offered will vary, so students’ schedules should be open for class on any of these weekday evenings during the program, and students should not expect to be able to enroll in courses only on preferred days or at preferred times.

All students who begin the online Ed.D. in or after May 2021 will follow the course sequence outlined here.