Experiences of online Change Laboratory research-interventions in miniature in doctoral education

This paper addresses the issue of fostering expansive learning in doctoral education using a Change Laboratory-in-miniature approach. Doctoral students face many problems when understanding activity-theoretical methodologies such as the Change Laboratory. While cutting-edge and promising, these are not easy to grasp for newcomers. In a practice context increasingly prioritising timely completion, such obstacles incentivise students towards adopting conservative, well-understood research approaches. This paper explores how the Change Laboratory in miniature can provide doctoral students with a Change Laboratory experience, but emphasises that the success of this endeavour depends on such projects addressing genuine practice problems experienced by the doctoral students in their own lives. Two miniature projects are considered—each conducted online, over a few weeks, with globally distributed cohorts of distance doctoral students. The projects’ objects, selected by the cohorts themselves, respectively concerned the informal mutual support provided by networks of online PhD students; and the use of Generative AI tools in academic research.