A Collaborative Dissertation?

Vicki Davis writes:

Should the PhD dissertation evolve into a collaboration?
Imagine the breakthroughs that would occur if Ryan was allowed to have his doctoral dissertation be "A proposal of Research Standards in Second Life" and that he was allowed to do it on a wiki and include others with the common purpose, focus, and same high standards. What a benefit to society, academics, and our future.

My answer:

As you know, I am in the process of writing my dissertation on Technological Pedagogical Content Knowledge. Today, I spent hours thinking about Robert K. Yin's "Case Study Research Design and Methods." I'm not a methodologist. If I was going to write a collaborative dissertation, I'd quickly find a methodologist to develop the study's methodology. But, if I did this, I'd be missing out on something important. As an academic, I think it's very important to understand why certain methodologies work for certain projects and not for others. In a sense this understanding promotes an awareness of what it means to know something and what it means to develop a strategy for learning.

As you know, we live in an age in which it's becoming far more important to learn how to learn than it is to know. Hopefully my time today helped me develop a better understanding of how to learn. If I had worked collaboratively I would not have had this opportunity.

Some things still need to be done individually.