Communication and Collaboration Gaps among PhD Students and ICT as a Way Forward: Results from a Study in Sweden

The low completion rate and slow progress in PhD education have been highlighted in many studies. Universities attempt to improve the quality in their PhD education programs. However, the interaction problems and communication gaps that PhD students encounter make this attempt even more challenging. The aim of this study is to investigate the peer interaction problems and Information and Communication Technology (ICT) based solutions from PhD students’ perspectives. The data collection method was an online open questionnaire (survey) and in-depth interviews were used to follow up. The target group for the survey was the PhD students at the Department of Computer and Systems Sciences at Stockholm University (N=90). The total number of respondents for the survey was 53 PhD students (59% response rate) and eleven randomly selected PhD students for the interviews. The sampling method for the interviews (n=11 and N=90) used different strata to get respondents who represented the great variety of PhD students in the programs. The data analysis was done with the help of SPSS (Statistical Package for the Social Sciences) and data mining (by the use of text mining). The results reflected a lack of peer interaction as an important issue in the perspective of the students. Based on this, a set of suggestions were discussed and the study showed several ICT solutions that have the potential to reduce the interaction problems and thereby improve the quality of PhD students’ collaborative learning and research.