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

Supervising research students
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Graduate schools differ widely across institutions, and the graduate schools at Imperial
College London were winners of the Times Higher Award in 2006 for ‘Outstanding
Support for Early Career Researchers’. Some universities have a single graduate school
which covers the whole institution, while others have separate schools looking after
different groupings of disciplines. Graduate schools may provide an institutional focus
in the form of a ‘Graduate Centre’ with PCs and learning spaces in which students can
also network, enhance social cohesion and come to feel valued and a vital part of the
university research community. On a practical level graduate schools may also be
responsible for ensuring appropriate monitoring of student progress and completion,
and the development of research degree programmes.
A useful support network for both supervisors and students has been the UK GRAD
(see also Case study 2) which is funded by Research Councils UK (RCUK), organised
around eight regional hubs.
The main emphasis for research students has been on the development of personal
and professional skills and integration of these into research degree programmes,
alongside the formal research studies. However, at the time of writing the UK GRAD
Programme has come to the end of its five-year contract and a new replacement body will
be responsible for supporting postgraduate researchers and for the personal, professional
and career development of post-doctoral research staff. The new programme will be called
the Researcher Development Programme and will be launched in September 2008.
POSTGRADUATE RESEARCH EXPERIENCE SURVEY
The Postgraduate Research Experience Survey (PRES) is an annual online survey
designed to collect feedback from research students. PRES is a national survey supported
by the HEA, and universities can choose whether or not to participate. Unlike the
National Student Survey for undergraduates, the information published by PRES
is not attributed to individual institutions. The public data are a snapshot of the collective
experience of research students from the institutions that took part in PRES. For a
given university, the PRES data are meant to provide an evidence base from which to
enhance the quality of the student experience and it is becoming increasingly useful in
benchmarking performance within the institution and against information from across
the sector.
Looking at the overview results for 2007 (Park et al., 2007), the headlines reveal that
Ph.D. students consistently identify the level and quality of supervision they receive as
the most important contributor to the successful completion of their Ph.D. Intellectual
climate was also an important factor in overall satisfaction. Research students were also
positive about their overall experience, with 81 per cent indicating that the programme
as a whole met or exceeded their expectations. The authors’ PRES findings are similar
to those from the Australian Postgraduate Experience Questionnaire on which PRES
is based.