The overall goal of this course is to provide the student with the opportunity to extend skills learned in prior coursework in the dissertation program, and their prior experiential learning, leading to the development of a dissertation proposal. Student will extend prior coursework in theory, skills at developing literature reviews, and the appropriate use of research designs to develop a research design assessing the efficacy of an educational or educationally related project targeted to the student's substantive question of inquiry. Attention will be focused upon developing the skills and knowledge needed to formulate dissertation research questions in order to design a piece of research that is original, credible and important to the field. [ 3 credits ]