Collaboration, Socialization, and Support: Accountability Partners in an Online Doctoral Learning Environment

Abstract

Non-traditional doctoral students encounter numerous challenges seeking a doctoral degree in an online learning environment. Non-traditional online doctoral students tend to be working adults who are integrating their online doctoral studies with the existing challenges of work and family. Effective online accountability partners must work within a framework of virtual mentoring competencies for online doctoral students to successfully collaborate, communicate, and learn together. The qualitative exploratory study explored the experiences of successful online doctoral students at working with accountability partners during their doctoral journey. The research question guiding the study was: How can accountability partner relationships be effective for online doctoral students when almost no face-to-face and in-person interaction takes place? The three themes emerging from the study addressed the online doctoral student's need for (1) collaboration, (2) socialization, and (3) support from their accountability partners. Study participants emphasized the many characteristics of a successful accountability partner relationship, including bidirectional support, feedback, communication, encouragement, cooperation, and collaboration. The study findings aligned with existing literature and illustrated the many challenges faced by online doctoral students that their more traditional student counterparts studying in a more traditional brick-and mortar university environment do not encounter. Numerous practical implications and recommendations resulted from this study. The researchers created the Collaboration, Socialization, and Support (CSS) framework using the thematic analysis of the coded interview results. The CSS framework is a practical model for creating and maintaining successful accountability partner relationship between online doctoral students.