Alana is a career educator, and author who was fortunate enough to work in online education as it began. This experience threw her into the traumas and intricacies of graduate student isolation. Now an examiner for universities, her early work saw her mentoring over 50 EdD and DM student through to completion. Her experience that, no matter how the pathways to completion were delivered, students stumbled at the same places threw her into a decade of research on: PhD completion, award winning dissertations and theses and what makes them different, leading to the elements required in graduate student socialization and new conceptual models in technology enhanced learning (TEL).
Now an educational entrepreneur, Alana focuses on how TEL can help universities equalize the graduate student socialization experience, at very little per student cost. Consulting with universities with the goal to reduce their “all but dissertation or thesis,” or “slow to complete” graduate population, she researches, writes and presents findings, each in their own way aimed at re-igniting discussions of socialization within university programs.
An author for Sage Publications with three textbooks, Dr. James currently is working on exposing aggregate engagement data as she raises questions and provokes innovative answers to the questions: “What can technology do to push back on the increasing isolation experienced by our graduate students?” “What does socialization mean in a digitally driven, knowledge based university environment?”
HER WRITING
Choosing to upskill through obtaining either a Masters of Doctoral level certification is an important decision, yet many find they falter once enrolled. Navigating the Hidden Curriculum of Graduate School is written with a casual and direct style to help you avoid the traps you could not imagine as you have never journeyed down this road before. For those who find themselves floundering this volume will help you get back on the road to success
A doctoral dissertation is arguably the most important journey that students will embark upon in their professional careers, so smart travelers will want E. Alana James and Tracesea H. Slater’s Writing Your Doctoral Dissertation or Thesis Faster: A Proven Map to Success at their fingertips. James and Slater identify the key places and challenges
Action Research for Business, Nonprofit, and Public Administration covers the background, process, and tools needed to introduce and guide you through to a successful action research (AR) project. Included are how to successfully initiate, plan, and complete AR within all types of organizations while focused on business, nonprofit, and public administration
The participatory action research (PAR) process discussed in the text represents the next evolutionary stage for action research and practitioner research in education. Authors E. Alana James, Margaret T. Milenkiewicz, and Alan Bucknam provide a readable overview of the PAR process similar to professional learning communities in schools