Postgraduate supervision tools

Supervision is the distinctive teaching and learning process used for graduate research education at The University of Auckland and most universities worldwide.

The Senate Guidelines on Thesis Supervision outline the respective responsibilities of supervisor and student.

Supervision can be challenging for both supervisors and students. It is useful to review practice and try new techniques. Reflecting on what happens may help to bring to the surface differences between supervisor and student understandings and expectations, or to clarify thinking at critical moments in the process.

Research literature indicates that good communication is fundamental to supervision. It plays an important role in building trust and goodwill, and helps to prevent misunderstandings between supervisor and student.

Good communication will ensure the effectiveness and enjoyment of supervision as well as the progress of the student’s research.

Communication skills are an aspect of our interpersonal functioning that can always be improved to meet the demands of different situations. In the early stages of supervision especially, regular meetings will help to establish effective communication.

Here are some practical tools that supervisors and students can use to help establish and maintain effective supervision and stimulating satisfying and timely progress.

Don’t jump into supervision - consider the decision carefully before agreeing to supervise/be supervised. In doctoral supervision, in particular, this working relationship will go on for a long time. The checklists below will help you to think through the decision to supervise/be supervised:

Students and supervisors will likely have different expectations of supervision - so it is important to discuss these early on and make agreements for how you will work together. In practice, these agreements can be renegotiated at any time in response to changing circumstances. As well, students and supervisors may have quite different understandings of how the research process works and the time it takes to achieve certain phases of the work. Again, raising these for discussion will be helpful for both of you, but especially for the student as a novice researcher.

For all sorts of reasons, problems can arise in supervision. The University has a policy that you need to know about: Resolution of Research Problems: Postgraduate Research Students. The Policy describes both informal and formal processes for resolving problems - the tools below will help you with informal processes in particular.