Report on Supervision Guidelines and Grievance Procedures, Sydney University Postgraduate Representative Association (SUPRA). (original) (raw)

A Pilot Study on Postgraduate Supervision

Procedia Engineering, 2013

The postgraduate education is considered to be important as it provides the educational institutions opportunities to build their research capabilities, enhance academic reputations and financial gain. The success and quality of post graduate education largely depends on effective and efficient supervision of postgraduate students. Despite its immense importance, the teaching and learning through postgraduate supervision is not still fully understood. As the expectation of high quality postgraduate supervision is increasing, the supervisory role is becoming more challenging due to the fact that most postgraduate students are coming from various ethnic, cultural, political, economical, linguistic and educational backgrounds and their attraction and retention are paramount for educational institutions. The primary objective of this work is to undertake a study on postgraduate supervision experience to provide better support for improving timely research completion, quality supervision, retention rate, student satisfaction, research environment and administrative support services. The research was undertaken based on questions based surveys. A set of anonymous questionnaires was distributed among postgraduate students studying at 3 universities in Australia. The study indicated ways to improve timely completion, quality thesis writing and scientific publications. The role of the supervisor plays a crucial role to the overall satisfaction, retention and completion.

Students’ Perspectives of Postgraduate Supervision: Desirable and undesirable practices

Environment-Behaviour Proceedings Journal, 2020

The current global completion rate for postgraduates stands at 60 per cent, and one of the main problems cited is poor supervisory practices among postgraduate supervisors. Therefore, this qualitative study presents the views of nine PhD scholars on postgraduate supervisory practices from four universities in Malaysia. The thematic qualitative analysis categorized the supervisory practices into three main aspects, namely desirable, undesirable, and appalling practices. The findings of this study though not conclusive do shed some light on current supervisory practices. The findings imply that training and perhaps the call for accreditation of postgraduate supervisors is in order. Keywords: postgraduate study; supervisory practices; feedback; learning community; Supervisor-student interaction. eISSN: 2398-4287© 2020. The Authors. Published for AMER ABRA cE-Bs by e-International Publishing House, Ltd., UK. This is an open access article under the CC BYNC-ND license (http://creativeco...

Effective supervision of postgraduate engineering students at Central Queensland University

2009 IEEE International Conference on Industrial Technology, 2009

this article is dedicated to successful supervision of postgraduate students in higher academic environment. Major issues relevant to postgraduate studies and supervision have been focused on an example of real life experiences in engineering education at CQU Australia. The article is a great and well organized source of answers to many questions like postgraduate students selection procedures, arena of responsibilities of an ideal supervisor, interaction and communication practices amongst students and supervisors, supporting students in a proper way, ethical issues, resources and supports for postgraduates and not limited only within these points. Materials of this article may be an excellent guidebook for junior as well as experienced supervisors intending to perform their supervising duties with high level of efficiency and success. Since this article has a lot of reflection of authors own experiences being supervised and experiences in supervising students, might be extremely helpful not only in engineering areas but in other areas of postgraduate studies.

Tracking New Directions in the Evaluation of Postgraduate Supervision

Innovative Higher Education, 1999

This article focuses on the evaluation of thesis supervision and highlights the vast range of problem areas presently documented as significant areas of concern for both graduate students and their supervisors. Additionally, the authors report on a study completed in 1995, which surveyed all Australian universities about current evaluative practices in postgraduate supervision. The conclusion of this study was that the conduct of such evaluations appears to be minimal and is primarily designed to obtain an indicator of the general “health” of a university's postgraduate supervision rather than to foster improved supervisory practices. As part of the same study, the authors conducted University faculty-based student and supervisor focus groups. Key issues emerging from these focus groups were: (1) the importance of relational aspects of supervision as the student communicates over the long term with one or more supervisors; (2) the importance of systematic feedback, monitoring, and evaluation to the supervisory process; and (3) the lack of strategies to facilitate this evaluative feedback process. On the basis of these findings, the authors designed evaluative strategies to facilitate regular ongoing feedback between students and supervisors.

SUPERVISION OF POSTGRADUATE STUDENTS

Supervision can be defined as a dynamic facilitative process that encourages a set of tasks and responsibilities which are performed in different domains. In research context, supervision involves supervisors’ and post graduate students ‘tasks and responsibilities in the supervision process. This paper will therefore concentrate on the four pillars of strengthening post graduate supervision namely: power relations, scholarship, practices and processes involved in being a supervisor. Power relations deal with the relationship between supervisors and supervisees. It focuses on how we go about creating an inclusive and participatory learning environment that enables students to acquire and further develop knowledge, methodological skills and writing practices during the research process. Scholarship deals with the strategies used to induct students into an academic community. It also deals with supervisors’ engagement with the scholarly academic community in order to develop a sense of being an effective supervisor. Practices in supervision refer to roles, responsibilities and activities of supervisors and students that enhance students’ development. Supervision processes involved in being a supervisor focus on the logistics of managing supervision with institutional requirements. The supervisors’ roles and students ‘responsibilities and expectations will be discussed under this pillar. Couching and mentoring in supervision as well as conventional and alternative approaches to supervision will be illuminated. Challenges in supervision and possible solutions will be discussed. Recommendations on how to improve the supervision process will be provided. It is hoped that this paper will shed more light on how supervisors should go about the supervision process. As a result, it is expected that supervisors will engage in effective and meaningful supervision.