Friday, August 31, 2012

Supervising Research Students in the Real World

Greetings from the Australian National University, where I am attending a workshop on research supervision. One question which a participant raised was how to supervise a student in the virtual world. The panel of experienced supervisors asked for clarification of what was meant and the participant explained they were referring to distance students who are being supervised remotely usually via the Internet. The panel discussed techniques, such as use of video conferencing and the student attending local seminars, to avoid isolation. It occurred to me that rather than this being the student in a virtual world, the student is in the real world, that is the world outside the university.

A quick search found only 54 scholarly works on "on-line supervision of graduate students". About half are from the medical field.

1 comment:

Leigh Blackall said...

i hope ppl will get involved in the onphd (open and networked phd) where real world research and supervision takes place.