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

156 ❘
Teaching, supervising, learning
THE ROLE OF PROJECT AND DISSERTATION SUPERVISOR
Determining how to supervise projects and dissertations may offer a great challenge
to the academic. As with any project, ‘front loading’ (putting most time and effort in at
the beginning) at the planning stage – both initially on one’s own and then with the
supervisee(s) – is essential. Equally important, ‘end loading’ (putting much time in at the
end) is often essential to ensure the written output accurately reflects the knowledge,
understanding and new skills that have been acquired in the process of undertaking the
project or dissertation.
Stone (1994) refers to the ‘walk-through’ approach as offering an essential planning
tool. By this he means that the supervisor should mentally walk through every step of the
project, considering such issues as phasing and likely time allocation. It would seem most
appropriate to pursue this method to promote dialogue with supervisees, particularly as
one of the regular complaints from supervisors with respect to unstructured projects and
dissertations is that students choose overly ambitious topics, being wholly naive as to the
breadth of the topic but also as regards phasing and costing out the different activities
within a fixed time-scale (e.g. literature review, research, writing up).
There are four key features of the supervisory framework which will require planning
for and sharing with the supervisee(s). First, determine and agree educational objectives;
second, determine and agree specific objectives to include formative deadlines; third,
agree set targets; and, finally, review and ensure understanding of the assessment criteria
(see Case studies 3 and 4). Within this framework, time allocation for supervision needs
to be made clear so as to avoid any possible future confusion and many departments
encourage supervisors to do this through set office hours. Within these dedicated
supervisory hours, the supervisor needs to consider equity of quality time for supervisees,
and thus should spend some time going through a few simple calculations.
Interrogating practice
Reflect on how much time, including planning, delivery, supervision and
review, you would normally spend on a taught course which equates in credit
value to the project or dissertation you are or will be supervising. What does
this mean in terms of the hours per week you should make available for
project or dissertation supervision? What does this means in terms of time
allocation for each of your supervisees?
Once a framework for supervision has been determined as above, legal (e.g. health
and safety regulations, special educational needs and disability requirements), ethical
(e.g. issues of confidentiality) and financial (e.g. restricted budgets for experimental
science work) constraints should be addressed. Such issues will undoubtedly be