As a part of their teaching responsibilities, PhD-students sometimes act as co-supervisors for undergraduate students’ bachelor projects, written assignments, master thesis, or research year assignments. In doing so, the PhD-students play an important role as a near-peer-supervisor guiding the students in their learning. This course aims to prepare PhD-students for their role as co-supervisors on undergraduate students’ assignments and/or learning processes. The course is relevant for all PhD students who wish to improve the quality of their supervision of undergraduate students.

Learning outcome

By the end of the course, the participants can:

• Discuss and reflect on requirements and responsibilities of the different supervisor and co-supervisor roles,
• Provide feedback to undergraduate students’ products in a way that facilitates the undergraduate students’ learning process,
• Align expectations and interests with students and co-supervisors, and
• Take measures to balance supervisor control and undergraduate student independence.

Content

Before the first day of the course, participants read 1-2 articles and prepare a few online learning activities about their current experiences with the supervision of undergraduate students.

Between the two course days, participants conduct an interview with a student and write a short paper about supervision. In addition, participants read 2-4 articles.

The main themes of the two course days are:

• The roles, requirements, and responsibilities of the PhD-student as a co-supervisor.
• The power of feedback – how to provide feedback that promotes learning?
• Alignment of expectations and interests in supervision.
• The art of asking questions that promote learning in the supervisory dialogue.
• Discussions and peer-feedback on the participants’ assignments.