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This chapter focuses on the impact of digitization on the conception, development and examination of the doctoral thesis in the contemporary university.

The approach taken is that of reflective inquiry. The author has taken a lead role in the editing of two handbooks for Sage: one on e-learning research and the other on the digital dissertation/thesis, and this chapter reflects on the changes taking place in higher education as a result of digitization. A number of examples are used to illustrate the possibilities afforded by digitization not only at doctoral levels but also in all dissertations.

It is proposed that digitization affects not only the conception and direction of doctoral research for the student but it has implications also for supervisors, those who ‘upgrade’ work from MPhil to PhD levels and also for examiners and librarians. Changes in the format of the presentation of the digital thesis allow moving image and sound, as well as still images, to be incorporated into the main body of the text rather than be relegated to an appendix (e.g. in a CD-Rom). The storage of the completed thesis in digital form, via a number of different repositories, allows for greater access and use.

One of the major implications of the digital thesis is that all universities must regularly re-visit their regulations to ensure that the parameters for doctoral research are clear, and that they are appropriate for the kind of research that is undertaken by students. Many universities are now making a digital copy of the thesis for principal submission, with print copies as optional.

Consideration of the implications of the digital thesis for students and universities is essential not only in terms of knowledge creation but also in terms of validation of such knowledge and its dissemination and use.

Global leadership research published in the form of journal articles, scholarly book chapters, and theses and dissertations from 2015 to 2020 are tabulated to ascertain patterns in the field regarding the quantity of publication in the field, type of research being conducted, authorship patterns, type of theory that is utilized, and linkages of research to related phenomena. We compare our findings to previous research and discuss implications for the future evolution of the global leadership field.

External examining imparts one of the pivotal means for ensuring the monitoring of the guidelines and standards within private autonomous universities and institutes. External examiners are considered independent individuals who can provide unbiased, objective evaluation, and informed comment on the student’s quality of the project as compared to the standards. Hence, the role of the external examiner is vital and has a strong influence on institutional quality assurance. The qualitative research has primarily aimed to study the external examining practices involving a private university in India. Interviews were conducted mainly with the external appointed examiners; however, the internal faculty guides or supervisors were also made to participate in separate interviews. The results were coded following the content analysis framework. The research unraveled Pandora’s box of the system bottlenecks and challenges concerning the expected and actual practices. Limitations, recommendations, and future research implications were discussed.

A large body of literature focuses on ways that learning experiences in colleges of education can combat racist stereotypes while promoting cultural competence. However, because limited research investigates how student research projects (e.g., master's theses and doctoral dissertations) can accomplish these same purposes, additional studies are needed. For this reason, the current exploratory mixed methods study addressed the following research question: “How does the racial identity development of doctoral students from colleges of education align with their experiences of conducting dissertation studies focusing on racial and/or ethnic dynamics in schools, universities, or human service agencies?” The research team used well-established scales to measure the racial identity development of Black and White participants. The team also conducted a series of three interviews with each participant to learn about how racial identity statuses contributed to and responded to the experience of conducting dissertation research with a focus on racial and/or ethnic dynamics. Analysis of interview data pointed to the salience of “advocacy” in the experiences of participants. Advocacy connected to doctoral research by affording opportunities for personal advancement and by affording opportunities to promote social change. Further interpretation revealed differences in the importance of the two types of advocacy for White and Black participants, especially in consideration of their racial identity statuses. Despite such nuances, the experience of conducting dissertation research reinforced all participants’ previous commitments to social justice and advocacy, but it did not help them develop more wide-ranging and systematic strategies for working as advocates of social justice.

This research highlights the scenarios that might serve as a strategic vision to describe a future beyond the current library, one which both guides provosts and creates a map for the transformation of human resources and technology in the university research libraries. The scenarios offer managerial leaders an opportunity to envision new roles for librarians and staff which brings a much needed focus on the development of human resources as well as a thought-stream to understand decisions which effectively and systematically move the organization toward a strategic vision.

These scenarios also outline possible future directions research libraries could take by focusing on perspectives from library directors, provosts, and administrators for human resources. The four case study scenarios introduce potential future roles for librarians and highlight the unsustainability of the current scholarly communications model as well as uncertain factors related to the political, social, technical, and demographic issues facing campuses. Given the changes institutions face, scenarios allow directors to include more uncertainty when developing and articulating a vision. These scenarios may start a discussion, before a strategic planning process, to sharpen the evaluations and measures necessary to monitor achievements that define the value of the library.

This chapter discusses how young Black people produce social agency through the sphere of culture, based on hip-hop. Divided into two parts, it surveys theses and dissertations produced in Brazilian universities on the subject in the last ten years. In a second moment, it proposes a research methodology that takes young people as narrators of their social experiences, emphasizing how they think about the school space. The work is an exploratory study and seeks the interposition between formal schooling and the cultural practices of hip-hoppers. It intends to affirm hip-hop as a power, an affirmative form of an ethic of life, a way of life, and a way of escaping the established places for poor, Black young people from the suburbs. It is also intended to show how hip-hop, a marginal culture, has triggered a game of cultural positions within the school and displaced provisions of power.

This study investigated the development of institutional repositories (IRs) at doctoral institutions, identifying factors that influence development and best practices using a comparative case study analysis approach to gather and analyze data. The development of a repository is one of the more complex projects that librarians may undertake. While many librarians have managed large information system projects, IR projects involve a larger stakeholder group and require support from technical services, public services, and administration to succeed. A significant increase in the development of repositories is expected with technology and process improvements for digital collection development so further study is warranted. Both institutional and subject repositories were examined for the case studies. Best practices and recommendations for future developers, such as early involvement of stakeholder groups and the need to educate both librarians and teaching faculty about open access collections, are also discussed. This study contributes to a more informed understanding of the development of IRs and identifies a model framework for future IR developers. The best practices framework incorporates the processes from the case study sites and includes additional factors identified from the case study interviews. Key to the framework is the inclusion of stakeholder groups on campus and assessment measures. While the case studies focused on doctoral institutions, the framework can be adapted to any size institution.

This chapter discusses textography as a strategy for researching academic writing in higher education. Textography is an approach to the analysis of written texts which combines text analysis with ethnographic techniques, such as surveys, interviews and other data sources, in order to examine what texts are like, and why. It aims to provide a more contextualized basis for understanding students’ writing in the social, cultural and institutional settings in which it takes place than might be obtained by looking solely at students’ texts. Through discussion of the outcomes of a textography, which examined the written texts submitted by visual and performing arts doctoral students at a number of Australian universities, we reflect on what we learnt from the study that we could not have known by looking at the texts alone. If we had looked at the texts without the ethnographic data not only are there many things we would not have known, but many of the things we might have said would likely have been right off the mark. Equally, had we just had the ethnographic data without the text analysis, we would have missed the insights provided by the explicit text analysis. The textography enabled us to see the diversity of practices across fields of study and institutions as well as gain an understanding of why this might be the case, all of which is of benefit to student writers and their supervisors.