Introduction to the Project - Part-2

Richard Farr: The supervisor. We are talking about the supervisor. So, you proposed a topic at some point in the past, and a supervisor was allocated to you. That’s the start of what will hopefully be, a very pleasant and fruitful relationship – if you do it right! One, of the key points is that it is the student’s responsibility to communicate with the supervisor. Please keep your supervisor informed, generally students do better if they maintain regular contact, so every couple of weeks?

Chris Grant: It depends what they’re doing, what stage they’re at and what progress they’re making. Certainly, there will be key times in the process where I would hope to hear from a student. It may be that at some points you hear more frequently from a student than every two weeks and other points it may six weeks. So it depends where you are. But it’s important at the beginning to have some dialogue, by email or skype, to discuss how the relationship is going to work. Some supervisors may want you to report in every two weeks, others may not. But it is your responsibility to communicate with the supervisor. The supervisor is not your Mum, they’re not going to remind you to do things!

RF: Yes, at the moment I have students from five different centres and different cohorts within that, so I couldn’t tell you who has got a deadline coming up and who hasn’t. It’s too complicated! So, the student needs to be aware of their obligations and deadlines.

CG: When you’re thinking about your deadlines, your supervisor will be doing other work, they may be teaching, marking, on leave, etc. So if you have a deadline of Friday and you send something to the supervisor on Tuesday, then chances are you’re not giving them enough time to look at what you’ve done, answer questions, comment and get back to you in time for you to do something with that information. So you need to make sure you deal with that in an appropriate and professional way, recognising that they have other priorities.

RF: Communicating early with your supervisor could save you a lot of work anyway.

CG: Absolutely, you may be trying to doing something that your supervisor has experience of so that they can guide you to avoid pitfalls etc.

RF: Or you write a magnificent chapter about, for example, the history of tea importing, and your supervisor may say, ‘yes, but this isn’t a history project, it’s a supply chain project’! They might advise you to put it in as Appendix I and you’ll feel really sad because you’ve spent a great deal of effort doing something that they could have told you very quickly that it’s not really relevant or would only require a paragraph. So don’t leave it until three days before it’s due in.

CG: So, maybe it’s a good idea, for example, if you were doing a literature review, to show your supervisor at an early stage, the sections you were thinking of having. They may point out that some things are not worthy of inclusion, or something that you thought was a small thing needs more prominence.

RF: Don’t forget, it’s your work, your document and you might want to go your own way after you’ve heard what your supervisor has to say. It’s an interesting time at the end of your course where you reach the point where you become equal, and within your specialist area you actually surpass the supervisor. So you may decide not to take all of their advice – that’s fine, if it’s well argued. What you don’t want is to find something coming as a surprise with three or four days left. We both administer programmes where we employ people to act as supervisors, don’t we? They get paid for 8 or 10 hours, they don’t get very much time.

CG: Yes, and that includes the marking, a supervisor will typically spend an hour and half to two hours marking a project or dissertation.

RF: So, students spend over 400 hours on a dissertation and the supervisor is spending 10, be realistic, they are not going to write it for you or have any significant input and you would be unrealistic to expect it. You are talking, in general terms, about subject areas, what you should maybe look at or they might give you items of literature.

CG: Yes, authors or sources to look at. It may be that they can add something in terms of helping you with problems, so if you’re not sure if you should do interviews or focus groups they can advise you with that decision. But you need to put the input in by having the discussion, rather than expecting them to just tell you the answer.

RF: Your supervisor, obviously, grades the work, and part of that will be on the initiative that’s been shown and the general conduct of the project. So, they like to feel confident that things are steadily moving forward. Please don’t think of your supervisor as your editor or proof-reader.

CG: No, and they’re not going to pre-mark the work and tell you it is good enough.

RF: We want you to enjoy this and take it to the logical end-point where you have satisfied your curiosity, met your aims and objectives and you’ve produced something with a nice all-rounded beginning , middle and an end. We can tell when something has been done in a desperate rush and it didn’t get much care and attention, you know, at the end you maybe get one paragraph of recommendations, sort of thing! That’s a shame!

CG: One of the things that will take you longer than you think is collecting data, whether you are doing questionnaires, interviews, or observations. It will take you longer to do it and analyse the information. The analysis is the important part, if you are just collecting data, unless you are going to do something with it, then you‘re not going to be able to make good recommendations, whether that’s for policy, practice, something that the company can do.

RF: Analysis of data is a whole other topic in its own right, so we’ll worry about that later! But, here is Richard’s tip for getting through this task: there are some jobs that don’t need as much actual brain input, but they still need doing, things like getting all your references formatted correctly and in alphabetical order; or putting captions on your figures and making your figures look neat. All of those things you can do when the TV is on or at a time when you’re tired.

CG: They are also thing that you can ask a friend or relative to check though for you or cross-reference your references in the text with your reference list.

RF: Do you keep friends if you do that?!! My point is that there things you can do when you’re not in the mood to do the clever stuff. What you don’t want to do is find that it’s due in 72 hours and you’ve still got to finish all of these jobs, which include a number of things that take hours and hours even though they’re not great science in their own right. So, I’d say do things regularly as you go through.

CG: As with everything in the project. A small amount every week right from the start and you can easily do a good job.

RF: Yes, just a little bit of professionalism in your communications, in the way that you manage yourself, in the way that you manage the information that you find – I don’t need to tell you to keep back-ups of all your work do I? I hope not!

CG: Keep your references! We’ve all been in the situation where we’ve had a fantastic reference and then you can’t find it again. If you keep a record as you go along it will make things easier and less stressful as you move towards the deadline.

RF: Yes, the deadline. Obviously, meet your deadlines please, otherwise you will lose marks. At that time, your work goes before your supervisor for the last time. They will grade your work. There may be a presentation as well on some courses. You have a second marker who will look at the work as well, that will typically be someone who has supervised other students elsewhere, so we second mark each other’s. They won’t necessarily know you at all, they won’t be familiar with the work, so when you write your project or dissertation report, it needs to be self-contained so that somebody that doesn’t know anything about the subject, with no pre-conceptions can come to it and even they will understand why you chose to do it the way that you did.

CG: But they will be someone who has a broader knowledge of the subject area, so don’t dumb it down.

RF: Yes, write to the standard that is HE6/HE7 level. And of course, if you do that right, this is the biggest single earner of credits towards your degree, you pass this one, pass everything else and you get to wear a silly hat! And perhaps more importantly, you get the qualification! Does that about cover it?

CG: I think so, we’ve indicated that there are some other areas that we are going to do more videos on, but I think that probably covered the main things for this session.

RF: You’re at the beginning of a difficult process, it won’t always be fun, but best of luck with it.