Supervising student research projects

1
Supervising student research projects

• Michael Larkin
• University of Birmingham
• m.larkin_at_bham.ac.uk

2

• Agenda setting
• Suggestions?
• Making the most of research supervision
• Anticipating and preventing problems
• Establishing effective relationships
• Providing appropriate support
• Strategies for encouraging self organisation,
  peer support and independent learning
• Providing constructive feedback
• Useful resources
• Learning from students

3

• Making the most of research supervision
• Why do it?
• To extend and develop our own research
• To extend and develop our own skills
• To develop relationships with other researchers/
  research groups
• To keep our working lives interesting!

4

• Anticipating and preventing problems
• What gets in the way of successful research
  projects?
• Access to participants be creative, but be
  realistic
• Ethics getting approval, and doing ethical work
• Professionalism finding a persona which allows
  student to take their involvement in the project
  seriously
• Anxiety about recruitment or analysis or
  writing
• Timescale over-ambitious plans, or absence of
  planning
• Analysis biggest worry the student is likely to
  have?
• Lack of ownership / responsibility

5

• How to prevent these problems?
• Establish an appropriate relationship
• Provide clear advice and support
• Work to a logical structure of project
  development
• Supervise projects which fall within or close
  to - your area of interest/ expertise
• Know the systems that you will need to liaise
  with ethics committees, research and
  development, human resources etc.
• Make use of supervision yourself
• Accept that some people will ignore your advice
  (and that some of them will still conduct good
  research)

6

• Establishing effective relationships
• Discuss how it will be
• At the outset (e.g. draw up a research contract
  agree who will do what, when you will meet, and
  so on discuss preferences and previous
  experiences)
• As you go along (put time to take stock, reflect
  and goal-set on your agenda for supervision
  meetings)

7
Dialogical elements in research supervision
(Larkin and Thompson, 2007)

• Supervisor
• Relational
• Containing reassuring
• Directing, teaching explaining
• Advising, prompting facilitating
• Facilitating reflection
• Procedural
• Negotiating timeline
• Sharing experiences
• Monitoring work-in-progress
• Facilitating quality control
• Giving feedback
• Prompting functional and personal reflection

• Researcher
• Relational
• Reflecting on process
• Collaborating
• Active learning
• Self-reflecting
• Procedural
• Managing time
• Coping with chaos
• Engaging with others
• Being creative
• Engaging with Theory
• Writing

8

• Providing appropriate support
• What is the threshold for supervision?
• Varies depending on the qualification /
  circumstances
• Important not to allow people to go too far down
  the wrong path
• May give more hands-on help when students take on
  work which exceeds requirements
• Looking to help the student to solve problems,
  rather than solve them yourself

9

• Strategies for encouraging self-organisation,
  peer support and independent learning
• Sharing responsibility
• Detailed timetables and progress spreadsheets
• Group supervision
• Additional learning opportunities (e.g. Library
  courses)
• Peer-learning exercises
• Peer-support groups

10

• Providing constructive feedback
• What feedback has helped us to keep going?
• What feedback has helped us to make our work
  better?
• What feedback has slowed us down, or made our
  work worse?
• Showing an interest in the work itself very
  important
• Positive and constructively-critical feedback are
  both important at different times
• Conflicting feedback from different supervisors
  can be difficult to resolve
• Bland feedback (fine) unhelpful

11
Useful resources Web HEA Psychology website MRC
/ ESRC Research supervision guidelines APA
research style cribs Whichtest Peers BPS PSYPAG
network Books Robson Real world
research Hart Doing a literature review
12

• Learning from students
• Some things I have learned from research students
• How to liaise with NHS RD departments
• How to plan and run a focus group
• How to carry out a Foucauldian Discourse Analysis
• How to use visual creativity to develop
  interpretations of data
• When to set goals and impose deadlines
• How to forge relationships with hard-to-reach
  groups
• How to write at least three different types of
  literature review
• What cosplay is