The Proposal for the Executive Position Papers

After the ed tech doctoral candidate completes the required core courses and ed tech specialization courses, the next step is for the candidate to write a proposal for the executive position papers. The transition from your coursework to your executive position papers hinges on a successful proposal. Students in the program must sign up for a three-credit independent study with their mentor when they are ready to begin sustained work on the papers. For most students, the independent study should be taken in the summer after the third year. Students with incompletes or courses to finish should not sign up until they are ready to concentrate on the papers.

The outcome of the independent study will be a draft of your Executive Position Paper proposal. That draft should be at the point where one more round of revision would result in a proposal ready to present to your committee (and it may be that the summer work will lead directly to an acceptable proposal, with no additional revisions). You should read carefully the three-page description of position papers.

Your independent study must produce a proposal draft, and in that draft you need to summarize and analyze readings related to your topic. Keep in mind that a proposal is not tossed off quickly. Although you need not footnote every point you make, the entire paper should be thoughtful. There should be a good reason for each claim you make, not just personal bias or past experiences. On the other hand, the proposal is not merely a "literature review," and we don't expect you to reference all the articles and books on your topic. You should present enough relevant literature to assure your readers that you grasp the major issues and are on your way to a fuller command of the literature. You need not "pilot" your study, although that may be appropriate in some cases.

First, describe the decision(s) you want to consider. What's the question in your mind? For instance, you might be asking, how can one design a Web-based teaching and learning environment that complements and bolsters the goals of your local school district? Should your school district modify its long-range computer planning process? How should the technology infrastructure for the new high school be designed? How can your company use educational technology to provide lifelong learning and just-in-time training for its employees? These questions might be called the "research problem," but you want to keep in mind that your work must lead to a decision and a plan of action to implement. The point of the Ed.D. in leadership is to improve your ability to analyze problems, conceptualize alternative solutions and plans, and make wise decisions.

Second, the EPP proposal should explain why the topic is worth your time and effort. What's the significance of the issues you'll study? Why bother? Make the case that your topic is important and timely.

Third, you want to describe how you will carry on your investigation. You should explain how your approach will produce information that helps you analyze your problem and plan policy recommendations. If you need questionnaires or surveys, provide a draft copy and justify its construction. Defend your choice of qualitative or quantitative methods, and explain why either or both fits this particular research. Just as an architect provides a "blueprint" of a new building, you should give us the specifics of what you'll construct. We should have a clear picture of the procedures--the wiring and the plumbing--before we approve a proposal.

Fourth, you should tentatively sketch some possible kinds of recommendations that could flow from your work. These are just hypotheses at this point, and you should avoid locking yourself into any preconceptions about what you will later endorse. We want to be sure that your topic can yield recommendations, and that those "positions" will address serious and timely issues in your site. The EPPs are designed to improve life in and around schools or corporate training organizations; they are not abstract exercises to be filed on the shelf once done.

If it isn't already evident, you should then include a short sketch of what you envision writing in each of the three position papers.

The first page after the title page is an abstract of approximately 150-200 words. The final page(s) are a bibliography of the articles, books and other sources you used in the proposal.

As your Committee reads your proposal, it should know what you plan to do, why it's worth doing, how you'll carry out the project, and what recommendations might result. The Committee should be assured that this work should be done, and that you can in fact do what you tell us you want to do. Proposals vary in length, but rarely are they less than 12 pages or longer than 20.

Students cannot register for dissertation credits until the proposal has been officially approved by their Committee.