Supervisors Can Better Support the Well-being of Higher Degree Students

Ryan, Baik and Larcombe (2021) surveyed 595 Australian master's and doctoral research students, about how their high rates of psychological distress could be addressed. The authors concluded students would be "likely to benefit from a whole-of-university approach to supporting their wellbeing, and from an academic research culture that values the wellbeing of all its members". However, I suggest what would be more useful are actions which individual supervisors can do. Recommending actions which they can;'t do may just have the effect of increasing the distress of supervisors and students.

Actions which supervisors can carry out on their own, without authorization or funding from their institution can help the students and the superior. Supervisors can encourage their students to obtain qualification which will fit them for a job outside academia and research. They can train students in staff supervision skills and apply them themselves, to avoid overwork.

In some cases potential supervisors should recommend to a student they not undertake a research degree, or at least not yet. Instead a combination of graduate coursework and vocational education would be a better career path.

Reference

Tracii Ryan, Chi Baik & Wendy Larcombe (2021) How can universities better support the mental wellbeing of higher degree research students? A study of students’ suggestions, Higher Education Research & Development, DOI: 10.1080/07294360.2021.1874886

Transform Academics: into Independent, Professional Educators and Impresarios

Richard Hill and Kristen Lyons wrote, "Academics are unhappy – it’s time to transform our troubled university system" (The Conversation, September 20, 2016). However, I suggest instead, it is time to transform our academics into independent, professional educators and impresarios.
Australian academics will be happy, when they skill-up to face the challenges of 21st century education. Universities need a mix of full-time academics, plus part-time professionals with current real-world experience.  Casual teaching is set to continue and academics need to learn how to work in this global on-line education environment.

School and VET teachers are required to have formal education to help them cope with student demands, teaching and administrative workloads. In contrast, university academics suffer frustration in the workplace, because they are not trained teachers.

Higher-degree graduates are disappointed when they find that there are few long term and permanent positions for them. The solution to this is to change the selection, training and therefore the expectations of HD students. It should be made clear to those applying to undertake post-graduate studies that this is not a ticket to a university appointment, more like a lottery.

The training for graduates needs to emphasize coursework and vocational training for jobs in industry. Those aiming for the small number of jobs in academia will require formal training in how to teach and administer, as that is what they will be spending more than half their time doing.

Researchers spend much of their time applying for grants to obtain funding, so training in business skills will also be required. This training is much the same as that provided for budding entrepreneurs.

Australian universities are currently experience a boom, with international students providing funds to subsidize research. Just as the mining boom ended with a sudden crash, it is likely that this education boom will end suddenly, in the next five to ten years.

The nations which Australia provides education services for are building their own higher education industries. Not only will these countries have less need to send students to Australia, they will be able to offer low cost education to Australian students.

Australia domestic car industry was protected for decades behind a tariff barrier, but collapsed when that barrier was removed. In a similar way Australia's education industry is protected behind a barrier which will disappear in the next five to ten years. The Australian eduction industry will collapse, if it does not prepare now for increased global competition.

Australian governments will find it increasingly difficult to provide subsidies to the local education industry. International trade agreements have exemptions from free trade for education. However, as countries see they can compete in this industry, there will be pressure to remove these barriers.

Even now, an international for-profit university can set up a campus in Australia and receive Australian government education funding. Multi-national universities do not need to employ more than a handful of staff in Australia to qualify as an "Australian" university, with the bulk of the teaching and administration done on-line, offshore. Australian students will find the option of studying on-line with an overseas university increasingly attractive.

Australian academics need to gain the skills necessary to compete in this international environment, providing reasonably priced education, which is both academically sound and vocationally relevant.

Attrition and Completion in Doctoral Education: A Wicked Problem?

Nigel Palmer  will speak on "Attrition and Completion in Doctoral Education: A Wicked Problem?" at the Australian National University in Canberra, 5:00 PM 5 November 2014:

"Is doctoral attrition a wicked problem? This seminar examines time to completion and completion rates for international and domestic doctoral candidates by gender, and explores opportunities for developing better strategies for engaging and supporting candidates through to the successful completion of their degree. 

Better information on degree completions for doctoral candidates is essential if strategies for addressing student attrition are to be effective. This seminar reports findings from a scoping study supported by the Gender Institute and The Research Training unit at The Australian National University aimed at informing future research and engagement on patterns of participation and completion in doctoral degrees at the ANU, and in the Australian higher education sector more broadly. ..."

But in my view, doctoral completion rates only appear a wicked problem, if you take students ill suited to undertaking a thesis, for whom a thesis is not vocationally relevant and then have untrained supervisors attempt to supervise them.

There are well researched and proven techniques to improve doctoral completion rates. These involve having supervisors who have a formal qualifications in teaching and with training in how to supervise. The students, including research students, undertake a carefully designed program of coursework which emphasizes teamwork.

It needs to be recognized that only a small proportion of doctorates should be what the Australian Quality Framework calls "Doctoral Degree (Research)". Most doctorates should be Doctoral Degree (Professional), producing original research, but relevant to a job and with more coursework. Of the small number of research doctorates, almost all should be by "publication". The thesis should be reserved for the tiny fraction of the population who are capable of undertaking this most difficult form of education. I suggest less than 1% of directorates should be by thesis.

If doctoral degrees have well structured education programs, designed by a qualified educator and if the student has a supervisor formally trained and credentialed in how to supervise, problems are manageable.

Australia produces about 7,000 PHDs a year. Assuming 4,000 of these PHDs remain in Australia, that is about ten times the number the nation needs for research positions. 90% of the graduates will be in vocational positions and so need a professional doctorate. So a reasonable division for domestic students would be 10% Doctoral Degree Research (400 students) and 90% Doctoral Degree Professional. Of the Doctoral Degree Research students, I suggest 10% would be by a thesis (1% of the total doctoral degrees, or just 40 students).

This problem can be made even simpler by not artificially dividing students into different categories before the commence their studies. Instead of having to pick those students most suited to research in advance of seeing them do anything, the should enroll in a general postgraduate program and then discover which way their talents and interests are. In this way the less than 1% of doctoral students destined for a thesis could be identified. More importantly, the 99% of students not destined for a thesis need not feel they are failures.

Sustaining Communities of Practice

Professor Rowena Murray, Director of Research at University of the West of Scotland will present two seminars at the Australian National University in Canberra, 4 September 2014: "Introduction to writing techniques - for supervisors and their students" (9am) and "Sustaining communities of practice around writing" (12:30pm).

Recipes for PhD

Greetings from the Australian National University where Milad Shokouhi, Microsoft Research Cambridge, is speaking on "Recipes for PhD" (slides available). He suggested potential PHD students think about why they want to do this and if they are interested in research. Also he pointed out that PHDs is not a fast path to a very high salary.

Unfortunately what Milad went through were the routine and obvious steps of being a PHD students, which research students learn in their introductory training. I would have liked to hear about some advanced concepts and some of what is done at Microsoft Research Cambridge

Milad is in Australia for SIGIT2014 on the Gold Coast, 6 to 11 July 2014.

Doctoral Education Trends and Challenges

Dr Margaret Kiley, will speak on "Should we be worried about the PhD?", at the Australian National University in Canberra, 4pm, 17 March 2014. This is the first of a four part series on 'Engaging in doctoral education developments and challenges'. Participants will discuss trends and challenges in doctoral education.

Should we be worried about the PhD?
'Should we be worried about the PhD?', is part one of a four-part series titled 'Engaging in doctoral education developments and challenges'. These presentations aim to provide participants with an opportunity to discuss international, national and local trends and challenges in doctoral education and what they mean for ANU staff and candidates.

Specific aims of 'Should we be worried about the PhD?' include:

1) A brief background to the doctorate in Australia and current data
2) Perceived changes in the purpose of research education, including the increasing attention being given to employment outside the academy
3) The impact of globalisation and internationalisation on research education, and
4) Increases in accountability and quality assurance in doctoral education.


Following the presentation, light refreshments will be served, and there will be opportunities to engage in discussion with one another, and the Pro Vice-Chancellor (Research and Research Training), Professor Jenny Corbett, regarding ANU’s responses to these trends and challenges.


Part two of the series, to be held in June, will focus on alternative approaches to doctoral education, including coursework and structuring the curriculum. Part three, earmarked for July, will examine the variation in candidates and supervisors e.g. age, gender, motivation ethic and language background and what this means for practice. Part four, the final session in November, will look at alternatives in supervisory practice.


The presentations will be given by Dr Margaret Kiley, a Visiting Fellow in the ANU Research School of Humanities and the Arts. Margaret’s research and teaching interests have been in the area of research education including: the examination of doctoral theses; candidates' and supervisors' conceptions of research; and the introduction of coursework into the Australian PhD. Margaret has worked in Further/Higher Education in Australia, Indonesia and the UK and has presented workshops on research supervision in Australia, New Zealand, the UK, Malaysia, Canada and the USA. She has a conjoint position at Newcastle University, Australia, and is a Visiting Professor at Universiti Putra Malaysia.

ANU Can Add On-line Teaching to Nation Building Research

In "Winds of Change Buffett ANU" (The Australian, 23 October 2013 & at ANU), Professor Brian Schmidt proposed the Australian National University (ANU) should have fewer, higher quality students and an emphasis on international research. Instead, I suggest ANU expand its teaching on-line, opening courses to a wider range of students from diverse backgrounds, while maintaining standards and furthering research. ANU should aim to expand to 100,00 students, with one quarter on-campus and the rest on-line. ANU would then be able to compete on equal terms with other institutions for grants and students. I will be discussing this in my address to the Australian Computer Society Canberra Branch, on 12 November 2013.

ANU's Special Role In Nation Building

Professor Schmidt points out that Australian universities subsidize research from student fees, something ANU is less able to do due to its small size. He proposes additional government research grants to correct this. Instead, I suggest ANU can expand its teaching on-line, while retaining its small campus character and research focus. ANU can expand on-line course offerings rapidly, as it already has the technical infrastructure for e-learning in place. ANU can use its research reputation to market on-line courses internationally. ANU also has the advantage of not being impeded by the large investment in satellite campuses of other universities, which have been rendered obsolete by the Internet.

Professor Schmidt points out the ANU was created to engage in research at the highest international levels. The ANU was founded in 1946, by an Act of the Australian parliament, with a charter to:

"To encourage, and provide facilities for, post-graduate research and study, both generally and in relation to subjects of national importance to Australia." (Australian National University Act, NO. 22, Parliament of Australia, 1946).

As detailed in Milton Cameron's book "Experiments in Modern Living" (ANU ePress, 2012), the ANU was established with the active involvement of the most senior levels of government, specifically to further the government, defence, industry and society of Australia.

ANU has continued to carry out its nation building role. From the mid 1990s, the ANU assisted with training, technical infrastructure and policy, to establish the use of the Internet in Australia and national policy.

The ANU can continue to fulfill the role of acting as a formal and informal source of ideas for the Australian Government. ANU now educates senior military officers in strategic studies. Options for Australia's future defence posture are being discussed in ANU seminars. This includes how to deal with the new bipolar world, between China and the USA, and what weapons systems to invest billions of dollars in.

ANU Can Be a Small University With Many On-line Students

I agree with Professor Schmidt that ANU should not pursue growth at any cost, but the institution can have a relatively small number of students on campus, while serving a much larger student population on-line. Students can include ones with the highest academic qualifications. However, they can also include students who have lesser qualifications, but who would benefit as individuals, or be of benefit to society, through a superior ANU education.

At ANU I teach public servants and staff in major corporations how to reduce energy use by and through IT systems. These students research their corporate systems and make recommendations to management, as part of the course. There is no need to wait years for students to graduate for their research and education to benefit society.

The use of the Internet for teaching is now routine at ANU, with procedures for designer, delivery and assessment on-line and students enrolled around the world. Within five years, this will be the primary way university students will be educated globally. Face-to-face contact at campuses will still be relevant, but will be reserved for important activities, such as talking to people, not sitting passively in lectures absorbing information.

Buildings at Australian universities were designed for teaching in a mode which will soon be obsolete. Some buildings can be retrofitted for new forms of education, but universities which have made a large investment in satellite teaching campuses will find themselves burdened with an expensive drain on resources. The ANU has the advantage of not having a large investment in this soon-to-be obsolete teaching infrastructure.

Professor Schmidt is leading the way at ANU with new forms of on-line education, by hosting one of the first two ANU Massive Open On-line Courses (MOOCs) at ANU. A single MOOC can have hundreds of thousands of students, several times the ANU's entire current student body.

A reasonable target for ANU would be to have around 25,000 students on the existing campus and another 75,000 on-line students, making for a total student body of about 100,000. While this is five times the current ANU student body (and more than twice that of University of Melbourne), it is still half that of the UK Open University, on a campus three times the area of OU.

The ANU can continue traditional on-campus small group teaching and in on-line extensions of such courses, using the techniques I use for teaching "ICT Sustainability". In addition new techniques can be used for teaching large classes to an equivalent standard.

The ANU students should not be segregated into separate programs based on teaching technique or delivery mode. The current categories of full-time, part-time, on-campus, distance and on-line student should be abolished, along with the distinction between coursework and research students. All students should have the flexibility to choose the delivery mode which suits their current circumstances. All students will require some coursework and all will need to experience at least the fundamentals of research. In addition all students should learn to communicate their results, work in a team and leadership. E-portfolios can be used to allow students to document these professional skills, alongside specific course and thesis work.

ANU Can Continue to Work With World Researchers on Campus and On-line

Professor Schmidt points out that CSIRO's offices are on ANU's doorstep, but they are a lot closer than that. CSIRO's IT researchers have shared a purpose designed building with their ANU counterparts, on the ANU campus. The award-winning Computer Science and Information Technology Building was designed with input from both CSIRO and ANU scientists.

CSIRO researchers teach and supervise ANU students and ANU staff take part in CSRIO research. This relationship extends to government and industry, as it does at every good university (part of the so called "The Cambridge Phenomenon"). Public servants, politicians and business people visit for a seminar, or a chat and discuss what problems they have and as what the future holds. Some of these discussions happen in official meetings, but mostly informally after a seminar, in a café or bar. The university initiated Innovation ACT and the Entry 29 Co-Working space to further this business/industry/academic collaboration.

I will touch on this in my presentation "ICT trends in Education" to the Australian Computer Society in Canberra on 12 November.

Providing Culturally Sensitive Feedback to Higher Degree Students

Yesterday I attended one of a series of workshops being given by Dr Sylvia Alston and Dr Elke Stracke, as part of the Office of Learning and Teaching  (OLT) funded project "Giving and receiving written feedback in HDR supervision: enhancing supervisors' and candidates' skills in a cross-cultural context".

The attendees were divided into groups of about five, who undertook a series of activities. These generally involved first filling in a one page paper activity sheet and then discussing the results. First there were two questionnaires, one for supervisors of Higher Degree Research (HDR) and one for students. The workshop activities were then on topics such as the effect the medium used for student-supervisor communication has (such as oral face to face versus email) and the possible tone of supervisor feedback. One topic which came up in discussion was dealing with students (and supervisors) who have English as a second language.

What struck me was that while this discussion was interesting, none of it was new. This was covered in the Graduate Certificate in Higher Education I undertook last year. Some of this was covered in the course I took on supervision (requiring preparation of a "Statement of Supervisory Expectations"), but also the skills on teaching generally are applicable. It is not clear what it is intended to accomplish with these workshops, beyond what is already provided in coursework.

Also the workshop was presented as a curiously old fashioned way, with no on-line resources and paper handouts. At the end we were handed a sheet of references, which might be very useful, but why do I have to type in the URLs from a sheet of paper? The workshop would be improved by applying 20th century techniques, having on-line resources before, during and after the workshop.

Workshop facilitated by Elke Stracke, Sylvia Alston and Joelle Vandermensbrugghe ...

Description: This interactive workshop examines traps to avoid and offers tips to ensure successful feedback practice in HDR supervision across cultures.

Feedback lies at the heart of any learning experience, and giving and receiving feedback is an important and integral part of postgraduate supervision practice. However, its complexity is not always recognized and the practice not discussed by candidates and supervisors. Students tend to be concerned by a lack of clear directions, while supervisors tend to complain about the lack of take-up of feedback. Often, cross-cultural differences between supervisors and candidates can add to such mismatches.

Find out more about feedback in this interactive workshop that draws on recent research in the field. In this 2-hour workshop you will
- explore how to give and receive oral and written feedback;
- examine supervisors' written language use and candidates'reactions;
- develop critical awareness of potential conflict due to language use and cross-cultural differences;
- increase your skills (as supervisor or candidate) in giving and receiving feedback in a cross-cultural context.

This workshop provides an opportunity to think about how you, as supervisor or HDR candidate, go about giving, receiving and responding to feedback, and to find out what works best for you. ...

This workshop is part of the OLT-funded project - Giving and Receiving Written Feedback in HDR Supervision: Enhancing Supervisors' and Candidates' Skills in a Cross-Cultural Context - led by Associate Professor Elke Stracke (UC, Faculty of Arts and Design) with Dr Theresa Winchester-Seeto (Macquarie University, Learning and Teaching Centre), Dr Joelle Vandermensbrugghe (UC, Graduate Research Office), and Dr Sylvia Alston (UC, Faculty of Arts and Design)