Can you see me? Can you hear me?

Master’s dissertations were once almost universally supervised in person, bar the odd over-the-phone arrangement. The tried-and-tested method of supervisor meeting student face to face comes with the in real life (IRL) advantages of body language, eye contact and non-verbal communication. Parties can engage with physical artefacts such as hard-copy exemplar submissions. It also has the “cup-of-tea factor” – where, for example, a student might arrive to their regularly scheduled meeting in tears about the direction their dissertation is taking but find that after a hot beverage and a good old chinwag, they are able to focus and continue to progress.

In-person meetings worked fine until the pandemic made online the only mode available. Post-pandemic, online has continued, and with it the possibility of in-person, online or hybrid supervision. When the whole process – from proposal acceptance to submission of a dissertation of usually 12,000 to 15,000 words – typically takes four to six months, the burning question is: which meeting mode is more effective? Having been either a dissertation student or supervisor with six British universities for more than 40 years, I offer reflections on supervision and what has worked well for me.

A proposed formula for master’s dissertation supervision

The first thing to say is that dissertation supervision has no definitive “right” or “wrong” way. The advantages and disadvantages of online or in-person meetings will differ according to the situation and parties concerned. The supervisor may work at the university full time and have office space or work as an adjunct with most interaction online; the student may live in another country.

Each institution will have its own policy on online versus face-to-face meetings, and this is usually made clear at the start of the master’s module. A useful hybrid model for a set of four to six meetings, however, is to conduct the first one face-to-face either as an individual or group meeting, with the others held online. The schedule is loosely agreed to have a meeting every three weeks or monthly. A date for the next meeting should be set at the end of each meeting and the mode, usually 100 per cent online for all meetings apart from the first in my experience, is agreed.

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The obvious disadvantage of in-person supervision is that both parties need to be in the same place at the same time. The logistics tend to fall more heavily on the student, who has to travel to campus (and possibly park) for each meeting, while the supervisor merely fills a block of meeting slots at their convenience. (In an extreme exception, I have heard of a Dubai-based academic who was supervising a student also in Dubai and they agreed to meet in Toronto when both were holidaying there.) Missed meetings waste the time of both parties. There are also health and safeguarding risks, and some students may need to attend with a chaperone for cultural reasons. 

The online mode clearly does away with issues of travel restrictions, distance and health concerns. A missed or late meeting can be rescheduled more easily, and with the use of virtual meeting platforms, an introductory group meeting requires only a computer and internet connection. Time waste is, however, as true for online as it is for in-person. Online meetings can be recorded, and this is a curate’s egg in that a lecture or group meeting with general information is ideal for a permanent record, but it can also disincentivise attendance. I don’t allow the recording of one-to-one meetings. 

Online supervision also means that meetings lack the human element. Connectivity and technical limitations can cause myriad issues that hold up progress or distract from productive discussion. The “who is in the room?” factor is another consideration. If the student is not alone in the meeting, any assistance could be deemed as ghost-writing or collaboration in what should be a solo effort. 

Online, it is also harder to detect when a student is struggling with the study, work or other external pressures. 

Advice for new supervisors

Supervising a master’s dissertation for the first time can be daunting, and each university has its own nuances in the process. However, I ran workshops at several institutions for first-timers who were floundering, so this is a distilled version, a few drams of advice, for the dissertation debutante. 

• Anyone new to supervision should attend any training and read all material provided to the students before the first meeting. Sitting in on dissertation meetings with more experienced professors can also be useful for nascent supervisors.
• The supervisor should have a good selection of distinction-level exemplar submissions from previous cohorts to hand, in either hard or soft copy, and these should be available to the students as anonymised PDFs, so that they can appreciate house style and level of writing.
• An oft-unwritten rule holds that the supervisor should let the student do the chasing up and requesting of meetings. In practice, this can lead to delays, a mad rush in the week before submission (an oversight on the part of the student does not constitute an emergency on the part of the supervisor), and in some cases failure or non-submission. To avoid this, the supervisor needs to follow up on missed meetings and deadlines with the student, tutors and, if required, well-being staff.
• The wise supervisor should set up chunks of time in their diary to conduct supervision and nothing else. As an example, if the supervisor has 10 dissertation students in a semester, this should equate to three or four blocks of three consecutive meetings per month. This will help to focus the academic’s attention on supervision. The initial meeting can take an hour, and subsequent appointments 30 minutes, depending on the student. Organise blocks of time to suit your own timetable, protecting weekends and leave. When I go on leave, I make this clear to all students and meet with them the week before I go and the week that I come back.
• During meetings, ask the student what they have done since the previous meeting and request a draft of the latest chapter two days in advance. For online meetings, I open a live email with the student and type key points as we talk. At the end of the meeting, I go through the points, agree what the student must do before the next meeting and ask the student if they have any further questions. When the date and time for the next meeting have been agreed, the email is sent and a Teams invitation is created.

Happy supervision.

Alun Epps is an external service provider to Henley Business School at the University of Reading, where he supervises MBA Management Research Challenge projects.

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