Students are advised to contact the program director for detailed program guidelines, in addition to the university’s requirements for the Ph.D. degree. Students who wish to pursue a Ph.D. in LS&T who completed their M.S. at WPI in LS&T, must have chosen the thesis option.
Fundamentally, it is expected that all LS&T Ph.D. students master the basics of Learning Sciences, apply those concepts to create an innovative technology, and properly analyze their work with the appropriate statistical techniques. Ph.D. students will receive training through a combination of enrolling in courses, satisfying competency requirements and completing a dissertation; all Ph.D. students will be reviewed by the Core LS&T faculty at least once a year to see that they are making satisfactory progress towards these three components of the Ph.D. program.
Course Requirements
The Ph.D. degree in LS&T requires an additional 60 graduate credit hours of work beyond the M.S. degree. Students must take a minimum of 30 graduate credit hours of course work, including independent study, and 30 graduate credit hours of research.
To satisfy the interdisciplinary nature of the LS&T program, each Ph.D. student must complete the following 24 graduate credit hours. To count towards the course requirements, students must get a minimum grade of B for each of the courses. Students receiving a C or below must retake a course in the appropriate area and receive a B or higher.
- Computer Science Requirement [9 graduate credit hours]
- Three LS&T Computer Science courses
- Cognitive Psychology Requirement [9 graduate credit hours]
- Three LS&T Cognitive Psychology courses
- Statistics Requirement [6 graduate credit hours]
- LS&T Statistics courses, or
- CS 567. Empirical Methods for Human-Centered Computing
All students are required to submit a program of study that describes their planned course work; their LS&T advisor must approve the program. These classes can include graduate classes at WPI, classes at Clark University, particularly from their Psychology Department, and from independent studies. However, to ensure depth in LS&T, no more than 9 credit hours can be from disciplines other than Cognitive Psychology, Computer Science, and Statistics except by the approval of the Program Director.
Students can count previously taken LS&T courses towards these requirements. However, students must still complete 30 graduate credit hours of coursework for the Ph.D. degree. For example, if a student had taken two LS&T Computer Science courses as part of an LS&T M.S. degree, only one more LS&T Computer Science course would be required, but the student would still have to complete 30 graduate credit hours of coursework for the Ph.D. Similarly, students who are transferring in with an M.S. degree will be evaluated for which requirements they have fulfilled, but will still be required to take 30 graduate credit hours of coursework.
To complete the remaining 6 graduate credit hours, the Ph.D. student can register for other graduate courses or independent studies with approval of the student’s LS&T advisor.
Competency Requirements
In addition to successful completion of their coursework, Ph.D. students must demonstrate competency in two core areas: Data Analysis and Communication (specifically, Speaking and Writing). Regarding Data Analysis, it is expected that students will learn analysis methods relevant to the Learning Sciences. We have selected these two areas as they are fundamental to success as an empirical scientist and will form the basis of LS&T graduates’ future careers.
Competency in both Data Analysis and Communication will be assessed as follows: Students will be expected to conduct a pilot research study towards their graduate research. Students will submit a short paper (10-20 pages) to the Core LS&T faculty who will write a set of questions to be asked during a public presentation by the graduate student of the pilot research project. Possible venues for this include the AIRG (Artificial Intelligence Research Group) or the Learning Sciences Seminar. Students will be graded by at least two Core LS&T faculty on their responses to the LS&T questions, their data analysis, and communication skills at handling spontaneous questions during the talk. This requirement will be handled by the Core LS&T faculty.
Students must complete this competency requirement prior to defending their Ph.D. proposal. Furthermore, competency requirements must be completed within four semesters after students begin as Ph.D. students, except by permission of the Program Director.
Dissertation Requirements
Within six semesters of being admitted to the LS&T Ph.D. program, each student must form a dissertation committee, and write and defend a dissertation proposal. Any deviation from the timetable for the dissertation must be approved by the Program Director. Any Core or Associated LS&T faculty may serve as a research advisor.
A student’s dissertation committee is composed of at least four members, as approved by the LS&T Core faculty. The committee must contain at least one Core LS&T faculty member and one faculty member external to WPI. To reinforce the interdisciplinary nature of the degree, at least two of the three cooperating departments (Computer Science, Social Science and Policy Studies and Mathematical Sciences) must have a faculty member on the dissertation committee. The dissertation committee will be responsible for approving the dissertation proposal and final report.
Students must enroll in at least 30 credits for their dissertation. Before presenting and defending their dissertation proposal, students may only enroll in 15 graduate research credit hours. Students are expected to defend their dissertation within six semesters of the acceptance of their dissertation proposal. In addition to the minimum of 30 graduate credit hours of research, the dissertation culminates in the student submitting the document itself and a public defense of the research.