Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership – Digital Instruction and Distance Learning Online
Deepen your understanding of up-to-date best practices in online/digital learning environments with the Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership – Digital Instruction and Distance Learning online program. Delivered 100% online, this Ed.D. program offers you the tools and qualifications you need to stand out as a specialized digital practitioner and instructor.
Apply by:
8/8/25
Program Overview
Learn about our 100% online Ed.D. in Educational Leadership – Digital Instruction and Distance Learning
Rise as a subject matter expert in the ground-breaking field of cyber learning when you earn the online Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership – Digital Instruction and Distance Learning degree from St. Thomas University. With a keen focus on shaping quality leaders in digital education landscapes, this highly specialized online Ed.D. prepares you to authentically engage with pupils across multiple virtual platforms.
In the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership – Digital Instruction and Distance Learning online program, you will strengthen your pedagogy techniques to include an array of technological instructional resources, discover new ways to promote technical skills that can be transferred to real-world settings, and learn to embed safety precautions when teaching students how to collaborate in digital learning environments. Plus, you will gain top-level leadership styles that resonate across wide audiences.
As a doctoral student, you will benefit from a dissertation that can be defended 100% online. Taught by respected faculty with extensive experience in their fields, this versatile online Ed.D. in digital instruction also offers reasonable admission requirements that allow applicants with a second master's degree to transfer in up to 18 credit hours (6 courses). No education degree or teaching background is required.
In the Doctor of Education in Educational Leadership – Digital Instruction and Distance Learning Instruction online program, you will learn to:
- Incorporate best practices related to e-learning instruction
- Gain a solid understanding of emerging and pedagogically relevant resources
- Develop comprehensive and innovative multimedia programming and curricula
- Discover supportive ways to help students grow as digital citizens
- Respond to the changing needs of diverse organizations
- Develop educational leadership skills and effective team-oriented approaches for teaching and learning to maximize the performance achievements of all learners
- Demonstrate scholarly behaviors such as reflection and problem-solving with skills for designing, critiquing, and implementing research relevant to effective practice
- Incorporate best practices related to e-learning instruction
- Gain a solid understanding of emerging and pedagogically relevant resources
- Develop comprehensive and innovative multimedia programming and curricula
- Discover supportive ways to help students grow as digital citizens
- Respond to the changing needs of diverse organizations
- Develop educational leadership skills and effective team-oriented approaches for teaching and learning to maximize the performance achievements of all learners
- Demonstrate scholarly behaviors such as reflection and problem-solving with skills for designing, critiquing, and implementing research relevant to effective practice
Digital Instruction Career Opportunities
- Instructional Designer
- Instructional Leader
- Distance Learning Instructor
- Manager
- Teacher
- Professor
- Instructional Designer
- Instructional Leader
- Distance Learning Instructor
- Manager
- Teacher
- Professor
Total Tuition
$50,000
Duration
As few as 40 months
Credit Hours
60
Tuition
STU’s budget-friendly tuition can be paid as you go
St. Thomas University prides itself on offering a quality private school education at public university prices. Our pay-by-the course tuition for the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership – Digital Instruction and Distance Learning online degree program is affordable and priced with the working student in mind. Financial aid may also be available for students who qualify. The e-tuition is the same for both in-state and out-of-state online students. Each course has a technology fee as noted in the below table. The total tuition shown is inclusive of the fees.
| Program | Per Credit Hour | Per Course | Per Program |
|---|---|---|---|
| Ed.D. in Educational Leadership – Digital Instruction & Distance Learning | $800 | $2,500 | $50,000 |
Tuition breakdown:
Total Tuition
$50,000
Per Credit Hour
$800
Calendar
Our application deadlines and course schedules
At St. Thomas University, we offer multiple start dates to accommodate busy schedules. Here you can find deadlines for your application, documents, and tuition payment for the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership – Digital Instruction and Distance Learning online program.
| Term | Start Date | App Deadline | Document Deadline | Registration Deadline | Tuition Deadline | Class End Date | Term Length |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Summer 2 | 6/28/25 | 6/13/25 | 6/18/25 | 6/23/25 | 7/2/25 | 8/8/25 | 6 weeks |
| Fall 1 | 8/23/25 | 8/8/25 | 8/13/25 | 8/18/25 | 8/27/25 | 10/17/25 | 7 weeks |
| Fall 2 | 10/18/25 | 10/3/25 | 10/8/25 | 10/13/25 | 10/22/25 | 12/12/25 | 7 weeks |
Now enrolling:
Apply Date
8/8/25
Class Starts
8/23/25
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Admissions
Here is the admission criteria for the online Ed.D. in Educational Leadership – Digital Instruction and Distance Learning program
The admission process is the first step toward earning your online degree. Familiarize yourself with the requirements for the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership – Digital Instruction and Distance Learning online program, along with information on required documentation.
Admission Requirements:
- Free Application
- 3.0 GPA or higher
- Master’s degree
Ed.D. in Educational Leadership – Digital Instruction and Distance Learning Admission Requirements
The following are required for admission to the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership – Digital Instruction and Distance Learning online program:
- Completed free application
- Master’s degree transcript (Unofficial transcripts are accepted)
- 3.0 GPA or higher
Official transcripts can be sent to St. Thomas University through Parchment and National Student Clearinghouse. Unofficial transcripts and other documents can be uploaded via your Admissions Portal or emailed to [email protected].
Courses
Here are the topics you’ll study in our online Ed.D. in Educational Leadership – Digital Instruction and Distance Learning program
To complete the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership – Digital Instruction and Distance Learning online program, students must complete 24 credit hours of core courses, 15 credit hours of specialization courses, 9 credit hours of research courses and 12 credit hours of dissertation courses for a total of 60 credit hours. All program requirements, including the successful defense of your dissertation, must be completed within seven years of first enrollment in the doctoral program.
Courses in this program are seven weeks long. Courses during the two summer terms, however, are six weeks long.
ELI 820: Issues in Ed Leadership
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
This course examines current and emerging issues and trends impacting education. Topics may include socially and culturally responsive teaching, teacher resiliency, trauma responsive classrooms, differentiation, student stress and mental health, grit, emerging technologies, flexible classrooms, and cultivating creativity. Topics will be dependent upon student interests and current national trends. Emphasis will be on developing, analyzing, and clarifying beliefs and practices as they relate to education.
Learning Outcomes
- Research and analyze current and emerging issues and trends in education to develop an innovative practice that addresses them.
- Reflect on personal beliefs and professional practice regarding select issues and trends.
ELI 801: Theory and Practice of Leadership
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
In this course, students will analyze the theory and practice of leadership and address motivation, sources of power, change processes and group dynamics. The characteristics and abilities associated with effective leadership will also be examined. Students will also explore the diversity of leadership theory and the impact of diversity on leadership.
Learning Outcomes
- Assess prevalent leadership theories and evaluate the importance of different leadership approaches.
- Evaluate the impact of various leadership styles in change management situations.
- Analyze the role of leadership in organizations with diverse environments.
- Address leadership-related questions by combining multiple peer-reviewed sources that follow scholarly guidelines.
ELI 802: Ethics and Accountability
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
This course is an analysis of issues of ownership, control, ethics and accountability. It employs a stakeholder framework, emphasizing an educational institution’s social and ethical responsibilities to both external and internal stakeholder groups. The course further establishes how ethical or moral considerations are included in the public issues facing educational organizations and the decision-making process of leaders.
Learning Outcomes
- Assess the role of ethics and governance in education organizations.
- Articulate the importance of accountability in leadership when addressing organization governance in educational organizations.
- Improve the workplace for leaders and followers using critical analysis to describe the values and ethics of leaders and educational organizations.
- Demonstrate the mechanisms of governance within education organizations and understand the key roles and relationships among stakeholders.
ELI 804: Leadership for Crisis and Change
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
Drawing on the five-phase model of the change process, this course uses real-world examples to examine the design, development, implementation and maintenance of educational innovations and improvements.
Learning Outcomes
- Identify areas of organizational crisis and develop skills for managing them.
- Understand and articulate the importance of management crisis and change in organizations.
- Define and evaluate the role of ethics in crisis management.
- Author scholarly papers following the APA format.
ELI 805: Strategic Leadership and Global Change
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
This course will prepare students to restructure and create empowering environments in their organizations. A body of research will be reviewed to provide an empirical framework that can be used to draw conclusions about strategic management and leadership in organizations striving to provide an empowering environment in the 21st Century.
Learning Outcomes
- Review strategic leadership and change in both a domestic and international environment.
- Assess the complexity of global strategic management systems and address the needs of diverse stakeholders in domestic and international settings.
ELI 814: Cross-Cultural Relations
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
This course presents an analysis of major contemporary social problems with attention given to controversial issues common in the workplace. Included in this course is an emphasis on theory, structure, and the effective practice of diversity as they relate to directors, managers, employees, students and faculty of academic organizations who are involved in a diversified workforce.
Learning Outcomes
- Manage and communicate essential information and engage employees and clients in areas of mutual interest through cross cultural relations.
- Evaluate guidelines within organizations that promote, and hire based on gender, ethnicity, and religion.
- Assess the potential impact of social platforms and sites, social networking, content sharing and web presence on managing an organization invested in maintaining a diversified workforce.
- Analyze the effects of cross-cultural relations within professional organizations and develop best practices on how to navigate them.
- Demonstrate how to choose and implement the optimal "Cross Cultural or Diversity" program when managing a diverse workforce.
- Demonstrate knowledge of cross-cultural relations in verbal and written formats at an advanced college-level.
ELI 815: Public Policy Leadership
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
This course examines various approaches to developing and managing public policy. It is intended primarily for leaders who are department heads, policy developers, managers and executive officers in organizations, higher education, schools, school boards, governments and statutory agencies responsible for formulating or managing policies.
Learning Outcomes
- Describe the policy making process and its role in the policy cycle.
- Review the methods for identifying, creating, and managing policy.
- Analyze key tools that policy makers use to engage the public and resolve public problems and issues.
- Develop research questions with a purpose statement and problem statement in a research project.
ELI 817: Managing Social Media in Organizations
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
Social media for all organizations consist of a range of web-based applications that allow anyone to disseminate information to online communities. The focus of this course is for students to assess the role of a social media presence in creating an online social or extended community for an organization's current clients, employees and friends; promote an awareness of the organization among potential clients; expand the mission of the organization; and build an identity and brand image.
Learning Outcomes
- Understand key terms and issues in social media and how they relate to and support an organization's mission.
- Assess the viability of social media tools in relation to an organization's desired outcomes and goals.
- Create an effective social media plan that incorporates all desired social media platforms and supports the organization harmoniously.
- Pinpoint, explain, and implement social media resources available for professional interested in designing comprehensive guidelines for implementation of social media networking tools across platforms and institutions.
EDT 610: Instructional Design: Theories and Models
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
This course focuses on pedagogical theories as they relate to instructional design, and on existing and emerging models of instructional design. Topics include major schools of thoughts on how people learn, instructional and learning theories, and instructional design models and principles.
Learning Outcomes
- Develop a deep understanding of the history and foundations of the field.
- Recognize and articulate current and emerging issues and trends in the field.
- Identify and delineate the use of instructional technology operations and concepts.
EDT 630: Multimedia Design and Development
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
This course is designed to develop students’ technical skills in multimedia design and development for instructional purposes. Topics include visual design principles, desktop publishing, digital graphics, and digital audio and digital video.
Learning Outcomes
- Design and create visually appealing and instructionally sound multimedia education content.
- Develop, apply, and assess specified educational goals for several types of learners.
- Find, choose, and evaluate visual and multimedia content to use in instructional materials.
EDT 800: Foundations of Digital Education and Instruction
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
This course serves as an overview and focuses on providing students with an introduction to the emerging technologies and pedagogically relevant resources to promote student learning in all organizations. Students will be introduced to the ideas, research, and terminology associated with learning and giving instruction in current complex digital environments, whilst also engaging in trying to understand the needs of future digital learning environments as technologies continue to develop as online learning evolves.
Learning Outcomes
- Describe the levels of digital literacy skills and the language used in technology implementation in education.
- Assess research regarding technical and pedagogical aspects of various technologies.
- Understand the capabilities and limitations of technology in education and apply it to current educational contexts.
- Ascertain the effects of new developments in educational technology on the key elements that make up the study of digital learning and instruction.
EDT 801: Digital Literacy & Citizen
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
This course challenges students to define digital literacy and digital citizenship in a way that helps them to lead organizations of digital instructors and educators to provide excellence in instructional practice, collaborative inclusion, and safe learning environments for all students. This course also challenges students to think beyond a definition to the practical application of digital literacies and citizenship to organizations/institutions and all of their coordinated leaders, employees, students, and other stakeholders
Learning Outcomes
- Develop strategies for improving digital literacy and citizenship.
- Create policies that measure and improve the digital literacy and citizenship improvement.
- Help teachers, instructors, students, families, and other stakeholders evaluate and improve their own digital literacy and digital citizenship.
- Compile research and other scholarship to improve digital literacy and citizenship and prepare educators and instructors for emerging technologies and digital environments.
EDT 813: Leading a Learning Organization
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
Organizations are systems within which humans are continually developing structures that influence their action. This course helps students become designers and members of organizations which engage in practices that encourage organizational learning. Students will examine ways that organizations create learning cultures as well as leadership strategies that foster growth, creativity and risk-taking while managing innovation, change and future planning.
RES 819: Research Methods
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
This course focuses on applying the principles, practices, and strategies for conducting research in the social sciences, particularly dealing with the interface of the human dimension in the social and behavioral sciences.
Learning Outcomes
- Create an appropriate researchable problem for a dissertation.
- Assess academic literature to support researchable problems.
- Distinguish characteristics of qualitative and quantitative research approaches.
- Employ research approaches to study an appropriate problem of practice.
- Conduct research following the guidelines of ethical, legal, and professional requirements.
RES 820: Quantitative Research
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
This course examines theory and practice in the design, conduct, analysis and interpretation of experimental, quasi-experimental and survey procedures for program research and evaluation. Development of basic skills required in the understanding, planning and executing of a research study will be covered.
Learning Outcomes
- Explore quantitative research and statistical concepts with emphasis on the writing process.
- Review and assess academic literature for the production of literature reviews.
- Study the use of theories in building research methodologies.
- Identify the components of a great introduction and purpose statement and how they function in research and research reporting.
- Assess research questions and hypothesis for correct use and applicability to the research proposed.
- Investigate and appraise a quantitative study that uses of the following designs: Survey Research, Correlational Research, Experimental Research, and Causal-Comparative Research.
RES 821: Qualitative Research
Duration: 6 or 7 weeks
Credit Hours: 3
This course explores the methods and procedures used in qualitative research. Topics include the philosophical basis for the method; the conceptualization of research questions; the selection of appropriate research designs; data collection; manual and computerized data analysis; and the drawing of inferences.
Learning Outcomes
- Analyze qualitative research, its underlying assumptions, interpretive frameworks, and ethical considerations and evaluate the quality, rigor, and trustworthiness of it.
- Utilize qualitative research designs and data collection practices to student-identified research problems.
- Collect qualitative data and apply qualitative data analysis strategies to it.
DIS 900: Doctoral Research Proposal
Duration: 16 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 3
Students will develop a dissertation or action research plan in collaboration with their chair. This course and the accompanying content create the trajectory for the culminating research experiences within the Ed.D. in Educational Leadership program. Additionally, students will develop an introduction to the problem, background, context, and abbreviated theoretical framework, purpose of the study, research objectives/hypotheses, significance of the study, investigator scope, definition of term, and an organizational timeline for completion of the dissertation/action research process.
Learning Outcomes
- Prepare for the doctoral dissertation by honing writing and critical thinking skills.
- Assess the preliminary steps for authoring a publishable research paper.
- Document ability to independently write the Proposed Title, Topic Statement, Background, Context, and Theoretical Framework, Problem Statement, Purpose of Study, Research Questions, and Nature of the Study.
- Develop a relationship with a dissertation chair.
DIS 901: Doctoral Research I
Duration: 16 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 3
Students will submit their IRB application and develop their literature review, including theoretical and/or conceptual frameworks. Additionally, students will develop their research methodology/design, including research purpose, objectives/hypotheses, data treatment, data collection, and data analysis.
DIS 902: Doctoral Research II
Duration: 16 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 3
Students will collect and analyze data associated with research in collaboration with the chair and compose the findings and results section of the dissertation/action research process.
DIS 903: Doctoral Research III
Duration: 16 Weeks weeks
Credit Hours: 3
Students will compose the resulting implications, recommendations, and study limitations. Additionally, the student will prepare a formal presentation for the chair and committee members in hopes of successfully defending their dissertation or implementing the results from their action research process.
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