HIGHER EDUCATION THESIS SUPERVISION - A NEW, HYBRID SUPERVISORY MODEL

One of the final courses, if not the last course at university level in Sweden, and especially within the engineering programs, is a thesis course where the students demonstrate their accumulated knowledge and skills. One, or sometimes two students, identifies a topic of interest within his/her main field of study and is guided through the process by a supervisor. Preferably the supervisor has a lot of experience, both within the main field of study and as a thesis supervisor. Many times, however, the latter is not always the case. Hence, some form of recording of the supervisory process would be of importance, to be able to assess the supervisory competence of the supervisor. Through this recording, potential weak supervisory spots can be identified, and a special focus could be put on these. In literature several supervisory models have been proposed over the years. The goal of this paper is to demonstrate, through a case study, how three of these models can be successfully combined to a hybrid model around the supervisory process building on grounded theory. A combination of the three models together identifies the individual supervisory process of a thesis supervisor. An analysis is then performed, and weak spots in the supervisory process of a novice supervisor can thus be identified and addressed. The results presented in this paper are based on a case where an experienced thesis supervisor was observed during a supervisory session. Hence, the case forms a baseline of what a “good” supervisory session looks like. By applying the hybrid supervisory model on a novice thesis supervisor, possible weaknesses in the process can be identified. As both students and teachers are involved in a one-to-one teaching-learning activity during the thesis process, CDIO standards such as number 8 (active learning) is important from the students’ point-of-view, but especially standard number 10 (enhancement of faculty teaching competence) is of high importance as the competence of the novice supervisor, or the lack thereof, becomes evident and can be appropriately addressed through especially designed activities.