Category Archives: research supervision as management

In this blog I am pleased to welcome William Stevenson as a guest writer. Industrial research managers often require their personnel to provide them with quarterly reports on their progress. This is most common when the manager himself is required … Continue reading →

The idea of research supervision as project management has possibly always existed in disciplines which focus on completion of projects (such as Engineering). In my reading of the literature this view of research supervision became formalised as an approach to … Continue reading →

I was recently asked to talk about research supervision at a faculty forum. I asked the audience what they wanted me to discuss and what were the problems that they were confronted with in their everyday practice of research supervision. … Continue reading →

One aspect of research supervision as project management is evaluating whether individual input of resources provides useful contributions to a project and/or deliverables which can add value to the project. Perhaps one of the largest resource inputs is the amount … Continue reading →

Most universities have an annual progress report that the supervisor is required to fill in, often in association with their research student, to indicate that the student is progressing at a satisfactory pace. Many supervisors criticise this requirement as just … Continue reading →

When a research student prepares a research proposal for consideration by their university, and often as a milestone for continuance of their candidature, they are often required to include in it a project plan to show how their proposed investigation … Continue reading →

I was chatting recently with a surveyor friend about a project he was managing that required the workers to work at a good distance from where he was managing them. He told me about a technological innovation that allowed him … Continue reading →

Developing a research proposal is often an arduous task for a research student. This may be their first exposure to academic writing and they may have some difficulty in addressing this particular aspect of a research degree. In the beginning … Continue reading →

When a research student is developing their research proposal, they are often required to produce a project plan to show how their proposed process of research will unfold, and how it can be undertaken in the prescribed completion deadlines. This … Continue reading →

In an ideal world, a research student would be able to just focus their energies on completing their research, but in the reality of contemporary university life, doing research is often part of a juggling act between lecturing, managing a … Continue reading →