Developing and maintaining a "completion mindset" is a necessary mental condition for online educational doctorate (EdD) and educational specialist (EdS) students to obtain their advanced degrees. The purpose of this research study was to examine the effect of a neuroeducational intervention on a volunteer convenience sample of EdD and EdS students enrolled in online research and analysis courses at a private central Virginia university to determine if the intervention would have a positive effect on the level of perseverance through the stages of practical inquiry when compared to a control group. The independent variable was a web-based instructional method consisting of seven weekly multi-media modules, a creativity survey to enhance intrapersonal knowledge, and a weekly self-report instrument to foster relatedness and to protect for treatment fidelity. The four dependent variables were end-of-course grades, a self-determination survey, and two persistence instruments. An experimental posttest, control-group only research design was used to measure the magnitude of the effect for this intervention. The problem addressed by this study was the high attrition rate for online doctoral students, and the potential for using a neuroeducational intervention to positively affect perseverance. Due to the short-term nature of this intervention (seven weeks), perseverance was defined as completion of the practical inquiry cycle; therefore, additional research will be required to explore the longitudinal impact on perseverance related to attrition rates. The null hypotheses were not rejected; however, the means of the treatment group were higher than the control group for all measures except autonomy.

Keywords

cognitive presence · doctoral attrition · Ed.D. · Ed.S. · neuroeducation · perseverance · self-determination