The aim of this course is to expand and consolidate supervision strategies and methods for supervisors of PhD students at the Graduate School of Arts.

The course also aims at furthering the sharing of experiences among university supervisors within their faculty to enhance the co-development of local practices and collegial support.

Learning outcome

After the course, the participants will be able to:

• Determine their own approach to supervision as part of aligning expectations with the PhD-students in accordance with current regulations and the outcomes of their project
• Identify and deal with typical challenges in supervision, such as balancing between the support and the control function, between the product and the process dimension, and between the private and the professional domain, in a supervision relationship
• Provide appropriate feedback to promote PhD-students’ writing processes
• Employ communicative techniques to enhance supervision outcomes and promote PhD-students’ independence
• Receive and give collegial feedback as part of developing own and others' supervisory skills
• Utilize their professional community as a resource in their supervision practice

Content

The course involves the participants’ existing experiences as well as current research. It aims at strengthening participants’ supervisory skills within following areas:

1. Content, text-based competencies
   These involve clarifying academic requirements to written products and supporting writing processes by providing and enabling the enactment of constructive feedback.
2. Relational and process-oriented competencies
   These involve establishing trusting relationships and negotiating and revisiting expectations
3. Communicative competencies
   These involve conversational techniques that stimulate PhD-students’ independent thinking and promote reflexivity. 
4. Community building competencies
   These involve the co-development of local practices and collegial support through sharing experiences with supervision and engaging in reflexive conversations on issues related to supervision.