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Course description

Supervising MSc student research is a complicated process. What is the best way to supervise depends on many factors: the abilities of the student, the type of research, the research phase (the startup, data collection/ analysis, the final writing part) and of course the abilities of the supervisor. In this course, supervisors work on expanding their own repertoire and gaining insights in their own style and possibilities regarding the supervision of MSc student research. We offer tools and guidelines for implementing personal supervising strategies like giving effective feedback, for differentiating supervision to meet students’ needs, for assessing progress, and for dealing with frequently occurring problems such as motivating students, dealing with delay and so on.

This course is aimed at supervisors of MSc students of the GS-LS. Some experience with supervising MSc students is required, in order to be able to reflect on your own supervising behavior during the course. Moreover, the course consists of several assignments in which you put theory into your supervision practice, so we strongly recommend that you have a student during the course.

Learning objectives

After this course:

• You have reflected on your own supervision practice
• You have gained insights in your own strength and development points, but also in those of your MSc student
• You will be able to apply didactical insights (theories) to your own supervision practice
• You have broadened your supervision skills (e.g. coaching & conversation skills, feedback skills, assessment skills)
• You have practiced how to use more effective ways to handle intercultural work situations
• You will be able to deal with difficult situations in your supervision practice from a broader perspective
• You have formulated, implemented, and evaluated plans how to optimize your supervision practice to meet MSc students’ needs
• You have developed a personal supervision plan

Instructional method

This five-session course will focus on placing supervisors' experience from their own day-to-day practice in the context of theory, and exploring its implications. The day-to-day practice of supervisors will be used as a basis of the course to ensure that supervisors will get most out of it. The following assignments provide an idea of how this works:

• Discussing supervision styles and possibilities with peers 
• Conducting a strengths/weaknesses analysis of both supervisor and MSc students
• Talking about mutual expectations with your MSc students
• Assessing progress of your MSc students on both product and process level
• Analyzing challenging situations of supervisors
• Exploring ways how to deal with difficult situations that regularly occur (including role-play)
• Formulating, implementing, and evaluating plans how to optimize your supervision practice
• Developing a supervision plan (how to work towards specific learning objectives in a targeted way)

You will prepare assignments in advance of each session and receive written or oral feedback during the course. At the first session, you will receive the book ‘Supervising PhD Students: A Practical Guide and Toolkit’ by Kearns & Finn.

Course trainers

Dr. Jessica Hegeman, Educational Consultancy & Teacher Development (O&T), Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ. 
Course meeting ‘intercultural communication’: Janneke Dubbelboer (Janneke Dubbelboer Communicatie). 

Group size

10 to 12 participants

Number of credits

1.2 EC

Course schedule

Course certificate

You will receive a certificate after actively participating in at least four out of five course sessions.

This course counts as didactic training for your ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ Teaching Qualification (BKO). 
Learn more about achieving a ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ Teaching Qualification (BKO).

Course fee

Internal PhD candidates: â‚¬0
UU/UMC academic staff: â‚¬1200
External participants (space permitting): â‚¬1950
 

• Internal PhD candidates are PhD candidates who are registered with the Graduate School of Life Sciences via MyPhD. 
• UU/UMC academic staff are PhD candidates of Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ who are not registered to the Graduate School of Life Sciences via MyPhD, postdocs employed by Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ or UMC Utrecht and other academic staff employed at Utrecht ľ¹Ï¸£ÀûÓ°ÊÓ or UMC Utrecht.
• External participants are all other participants.

Our no-show policy

We are happy to offer courses and workshops for free to all GSLS PhDs. However: free of charge does not mean free of responsibility. Our activities tend to be fully booked well in advance. For every late cancellation or no-show we have had to disappoint others who would have liked to attend. 

This is how we work: 

• Once you have signed up for a course, we expect you to attend;
• If you need to cancel your registration, do so at the earliest possible moment, at least four weeks before the start of the course;
• If you really have to, you are allowed to miss up to one session of this course in total. You always have to attend the first course session.
• Not meeting the attendance requirements or cancelling within four weeks before the course starts means you will be charged no-show fee (€600 for this course);
• We are unable to make any exceptions.