Your research supervisor

Ross Woods, Rev. 2020, '23

The main task

The main task of a research supervisor is to maintain the institution’s standards and procedures. This includes ensuring:

• the authenticity of your work
• suitable structure and layout
• correct submission procedures
• appropriate critical thought and
• valid research design

Students are usually surprised to learn that providing help is not the primary responsibility of the supervisor.

The supervisor might choose to refer to other experts to seek advice on a specialised issue, or get a second opinion on methodology or assessment.

Although it rarely occurs, supervisors might take action when a student's work is very different from the required standard. For example, they might suggest transfer to either a lower or higher award, or to an additional award.

The student’s responsibilities

Research students are expected to be autonomous self-starters who are responsible for their own work. In the end, it is the student who is assessed, not the supervisor.

As a student, you are responsible to:

• find your own resources
• initiate and defend your own original ideas
• commit your work to writing, both in field notes and manuscripts
• report regularly. The supervisor might prefer either weekly or fortnightly during semester. When you start getting your work into writing, you should email drafts of your recent chapters.
• proof-read all your own spelling, grammar, punctuation, etc.
• ask for help if you get stuck.

In extreme cases, a student who is too dependent on the supervisor to conduct their own research might be asked to transfer to another program.

Relating to your supervisor

The supervisor may take on any of the following roles:

• a research colleague
• an adviser, whose advice you might be required to accept
• an administrator
• an assessor

Relationships with supervisors are usually close and complex. As a colleague he/she might be a friend with whom you interact and discuss your ideas. He/she might encourage you or (if necessary) give you correction. But as an administrator or assessor, he/she might have considerable power over your research.

Accept that the supervisor will look at the work from a more neutral viewpoint. You can't easily check your own work; it is hard to see mistakes in something you wrote yourself that you think is very good.

If a supervisor gives a negative critique of some of your work, do not take it as a personal attack. Perhaps you need to work on corrections. (Remember that it is the final product that is assessed, not mistakes in the preliminary drafts.) 

More often, a mistake in your work is an opportunity for revision. It might only be that your draft still needs polishing. Perhaps you overlooked something important or included something that should have been omitted.

The supervisor-student relationship sometimes sours. This might be through fundamentally different opinions, lack of contact, misunderstandings through emails, or critique of work. As it is not normally permitted to change your supervisor, your first course of action should be to repair the relationship.

How supervisors help

The supervisor's role often varies according to the stage of the project:

• You might be more an expert than the supervisor when working through the details of the literature review and the data analysis, or some of the practicalities of the fieldwork situation.
• The supervisor will be more expert in methodology, research design and validity, general theory, and presentation.

Almost all students need supervisor help at some stage of their projects. Supervisor help might involve:

• helping you gain permission or access for research
• liasing with administration for you
• encouraging you
• tracking your progress
• giving you extra reading
• acting as a sounding board so you can develop your own ideas
• asking you leading questions
• providing interaction to draw out important ideas
• asking about apparent inadequacies or mistakes
• providing a critique of your work
• sorting out difficulties
• recommending particular courses of action
• making firm decisions when the success of the project is at stake.

In some aspects of your research, you simply need to follow your supervisor's instructions. For example, most theses must meet all requirements of the style guide. (For some unusual cases, you might get an exemption.) If your supervisor advises you on how to present your thesis in writing, just follow instructions.

Handing work in

You will be sending chapters and whole drafts to your supervisor.

• Check your typing and spelling before you hand anything in. Otherwise the supervisor will probably not read it. (It doesn't need to be perfect, but it does need to be readable.)
• Send it in well ahead of the meeting; give the supervisor enough time to read and reflect on it before you meet. If it arrives too late, the supervisor probably won’t read it and the meeting will be wasted.
• Have only one current version at a time. Having multiple versions creates confusion and slows everybody down.
• Do not send frequent new versions to your supervisor. Consider this situation:
• Brad is working very hard editing his thesis. Twice each week he sends his supervisor, Emma Plum, an updated copy and suggests she read it and make comments. However, Emma now has a collection of very imperfect drafts, most of which she has not read yet. If she were to make comments, they might be overtaken by the next draft, perhaps with corrections on anything she commented on. Consequently, she has no choice but to ignore them all. This makes interviews difficult, because Emma has not read the drafts. It would have been better if Brad had only one current version.

Preparing for interviews

If you have regular personal or telephone interviews with a supervisor, you need to prepare proactively:

• Check that the time and location is suitable.
• Read any relevant material in this website beforehand.
• Send your written work beforehand, so that the supervisor has time read it and give it appropriate reflection before your interview.
• If you were asked to make a series of corrections, check that you have made them all before you send off your draft.
• Make a written list of your questions and ideas.
• Plan your next step.

Then, during the interview, keep to the allotted time, usually 60 or 90 minutes.

If you use email "interviews", the same kind of guidelines also apply. It will probably pay to write rough drafts of your questions and reflect on them for a few days. You might realise some of the answers yourself, find a better way to ask the question, or find that another underlying question is the real issue.

In any case, it is better to ask for help than to become increasingly frustrated, and email is a better medium than most to ask for help when you need it.

What went wrong?

Consider this scenario:

Joe is an online dissertation student and Sarah is the chairperson of the committee of supervisors. Joe recently submitted a draft shapter for the third time, and Sarah has again rejected it, asking again for corrections. Joe now wants to lodge a formal complaint.

It's understandable that Joe is frustrated. However, a broader viewpoint might reveal more about what is actually happpening. Consider the following possibilities:

1. Sarah, the supervisor, doesn't know that she appears to be inconsistent.
2. The draft chapter might have so many errors that Sarah cannot give advice in one message.
3. The draft chapter might contain very complex errors that Sarah cannot give advice in one message.
4. Some of Joe's corrections haven't worked, and he doesn't know why. Perhaps he doesn't understand or accept Sarah's explanation. Perhaps Sarah is not very good at explaining her views.
5. Sarah can see that something is wrong but doesn't know quite what it is. The chapter is somehow inconsistent, but she doesn't want to do all the work to figure it out. She thinks it is the student's role to find and fix errors.
6. Sarah can see something wrong in the chapter but doesn't know how to correct it. She thinks it is the student's role to find and fix errors.
7. Sarah forgot what she said before and treats every submission as a new submission.
8. Nothing is wrong; Sarah is just grumpy or tired.
9. A combination of two or more of the above.

Joe needs an answer now; delay is not an option. A simple phone call is probably the best option. (An email is too easy to misunderstand.) Alternatively, other committee members might be willing to give advice. A formal complaint is probably not a good idea yet, but might eventually be justified.

Whatever the case, Joe needs to learn as much as he can from the experience.