Doctoral School COVID-19, a new context In a year dominated by COVID-19, the existing methodology designed by the Doctoral School for preparing theses online contined to work well. In addition, the school had to adapt to the new circumstances by adding online thesis defences and a new welcome system for predoctoral researchers who were joining. By the end of academic year 2019/2020, over 200 theses had been read at the Doctoral School, 19 of them during this academic year (three of them fully online), and the school had almost 300 doctoral students of 39 nationalities.
"Working at an online university has many advantages and gives you more flexibility. You can work from home, but you can also have an office and colleagues to interact with. There is a very active community of researchers." Mitchell Peters did the Education and ICT programme, and the flexibility of studying at the UOC enabled him to achieve both personal and professional goals. In July 2020, his thesis, "The Contribution of Lifelong Learning Ecologies in Online HE: Graduate Student Learning Across Contexts", became the first to be defended online by a predoctoral researcher at the UOC. 62
Annual report | 2019/2020
