The Maryland Modular Method: An Approach to Doctoral Education in Information Studies

As the field of information studies has matured into a broad interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary field of study, the expectations for and range of students seeking doctoral education have evolved significantly. The majority of information studies pedagogical literature, however, continues to focus on the master's level. Building on efforts of the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland to develop a new doctoral program, this paper presents a modular approach to doctoral education. We argue for the value of designing doctoral education models that embrace the unique interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary nature of information studies, highlighting a combination of conceptual lenses and content modules as a way to conceive new approaches to doctoral education that foster students' ability to conduct research in their areas of interest while simultaneously learning about the array of topics that can be explored in information studies. While the Maryland experience is presented as a case study, the potential relevance of this approach to doctoral education in other information studies programs is discussed in detail. Keywords: doctoral education, information studies, modules, lenses, integrative paper, program development Introduction The range of schools offering doctoral degrees related to information studies is diverse, ranging from programs emphasizing a particular area, such as library and information science, to programs that offer a very wide range of specializations drawing from disciplines such as library science, computer science, education, humanities, psychology, social science, engineering, media studies, journalism, communication, and public policy. They are unified by the mission to study information and provide education about information. Given the breadth of roles of information in society, all of these information studies programs are interdisciplinary and multi-disciplinary, indicating the need for the development of new approaches to doctoral education to fit the roles and expectations of such broad areas of study. Given the range of names used by programs that provide doctoral degrees related to information, this paper refers to the field as information studies to try to be inclusive of all approaches to information education. In 2004, when the College of Information Studies at the University of Maryland began re-examining its doctoral program, there were few resources in the scholarly literature to support this re-imagining. A few papers have described the evolution of a doctoral program as a result of department restructuring (e.g., Mokros, 2008), explored whether there existed unifying doctoral cores or perspectives (e.g., Pettigrew & Durrance, 2000; Powell, 1995), and charted the scope of the pedagogy and backgrounds of the faculty members teaching in doctoral programs (Dillon & Norris, 2005; Weech & Pluzhenskaia, 2005). The majority of scholarly literature on program building and implementation in information studies relates to the master's level. The result of this process of revising the doctoral program at Maryland - what we have dubbed the Maryland Modular Method - has shown great potential in the first two years of its usage as the heart of our new doctoral program. This paper describes the modular approach Maryland has taken to doctoral education and presents how this program approach may connect to other pedagogical approaches and theoretical frameworks, examining the implications of and lessons from the efforts at Maryland for doctoral programs in information studies. While our program certainly can have application in other programs in information studies, this Maryland approach is presented as a case study, one of many potential approaches to the creation and implementation of a doctoral education program in information studies. Lenses for Information Studies Doctoral Education Doctoral education across programs in information studies has embraced multidisciplinarity and interdisciplinarity to bring together complementary perspectives that can help to solve complex problems. …