Expectations of Research Students About Online Supervision of Thesis Supervisors: A Case of Virtual University of Pakistan

Abstract

The study aims to explore postgraduate research students expectations from their thesis supervisors in online postgraduate programs. Particularly it aimed to study their perceptions of the role of thesis supervisor in their postgraduate research work. The study followed survey research design. The population comprised 1118 Postgraduate (MS) students enrolled in nine programs at post-graduation level in spring 2018. Using stratified random sampling technique, a total of 150 postgraduate research students were selected from five programs (MS Computer science, M Phil Educational Leadership and Management, MS Business Administration, MS Mathematics and MS Zoology of four faculties of Virtual University of Pakistan. Data were collected through researcher made scale Expectations of Research Students (ERS) having five subscales and 28 items. Mean, Standard Deviation and ANOVA were applied for obtaining results. Findings suggested that well documented and communicated thesis supervision regulations and including face-to-face interactions with online supervision could make some improvements to the outcomes of online supervision.

The HDR Process: Reflection on the Motivational Factors, Academic Model, Influences and Challenges That Enabled an Academic to Complete Her Thesis Part-Time

“…Experienced HDR supervisors may argue that students should develop a sense of autonomy and ownership, described by Ryan and Deci of the projects when navigating the thesis process [5] However, students are restricted by rules and regulations. Often these rules of engagement are inconsistently applied, for a variety of reasons, such as actual time spent liaising with supervisors, and engagement in research which influences successful advancement through the thesis process [14].…”

“…Even the most experienced, academically capable student would be confronted with the retrospective step of moving from a constructivist, student centred approach in undergraduate and postgraduate coursework degree programs back to a traditional model of teaching [15]. The traditional model of supervision where the teacher is the expert and student are the apprentice has merits such as encouraging independent learning [15], [16] One might argue that the student may have autonomy to select their own topic and is responsible for researching and producing a thesis to completion [5], [16] However, the actual support from supervisors for students needs to be scaffolded along the journey with awareness of the student's psychological needs [14]. Then specific milestones are negotiated as checkpoints used to assess the student's current and future levels of performance.…”

“…Feedback strategies are a grey area as there are such a wide variety of mechanisms to provide it to students. Knowing which ones will be useful is not always apparent in this relationship [14] In addition, not all supervision relationships provide opportunities to engage in 360degree feedback so that the student can articulate whether specific feedback was helpful or needed to be explained in more detail [14]…”

Online Mini Thesis Supervision: Students’ Perception

“…The online research guidance has been carried out by several researchers who obtain and publish their research results. The research was carried out in several fields including the information system (Kusuma, 2018), elementary school education (Kintama, et al, 2021), biology (Juita and Yusmaridi, 2020), and the social field (Jabeen et al, 2020). However, research on online tutoring that focuses on implementation in the English department for its impact and techniques is still limited.…”