A Handbook for Teaching and Learning in Higher Education Enhancing academic and Practice

Supervising projects and dissertations
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Supervisor
Abdication
INPUT
Autocracy
Supervisee
TIME
Figure 11.1 Supervisor–supervisee relationship in project supervision
and dissertations are a piece of project management with an emphasis on the students
determining the parameters within which they will operate to deliver a time-bound,
externally described output – a project or dissertation of a certain length and format.
Within this specified time framework students are offered the potential to pursue their
own interests within a given discipline area. The role of the supervisor thus moves away
from that of teacher, providing the format within which students will be expected to
perform, to that of facilitator, thus promoting a different sort of relationship with a subtly
different skills set.
There is a distinction between the supervision of projects and dissertations and the
routine supervision of students by teaching staff. The former requires a time-bound,
managed activity that demands project management skills on the part of both supervisor
and supervisee. The latter requires self-awareness (e.g. of one’s personality style, gender,
class and race), combined with an ability to engage in reflective practice and acute
sensitivity to the needs of the student. It is this distinction that warrants further
consideration.
Projects and dissertations clearly offer a teaching and learning strategy which passes
the onus for learning on to the students, requiring supervisors to reposition themselves
away from the role of teacher, moving vertically up the axis to that of facilitator, as
illustrated in Figure 11.1. However, such a figure can offer too simplistic a picture, as
effective supervisors would suggest that intense periods of time have to be deployed
with supervisees, both at the commencement of the project and as the project is being
pulled together at the end. Nevertheless, the implications of this shift in role offer the
greatest potential for student learning, at the same time as offering the greatest potential
for role conflict on the part of the supervisor. As Day et al. (1998: 51) suggest, ‘avoiding
the twin traps of over- or under-supervising is never easy’.
Establishing and agreeing the appropriate working relationship between supervisor
and supervisees – a highly complex and underexplored area at the undergraduate level
– offers the key to maximising the learning capacity of projects and dissertations. How
to achieve such a working relationship is explored in detail in the next section.