Supervising Towards Independence

Summary, in English

Supervising a student can be compared to teaching someone to drive a car. The student is in the driver’s seat while the supervisor provides structure and guidance, and can intervene in risky and unsafe situations. It is a learning process in which the student gradually gains experience and sufficient skill to obtain a driving license, and to drive without an instructor. Similarly, a student attending the MSc project course at the technical faculty of Lund University is to “develop and demonstrate knowledge and ability required to autonomously work as an engineer” (from MSc course plan). But what factors affect a MSc project, and how can we as supervisors support students in their learning process towards independence? We performed a case study of two completed MSc projects where we interviewed the student, the supervisor and the examiner for each case. In this article we present the main conclusions drawn from the cross-case analysis of this study. Details on the studied cases and the results on which these conclusions are based can be found in our previous publication of this study.

• Author: Elizabeth Bjarnason; Markus Borg; Bertil Lindvall
• Department/s: Department of Computer Science; Department of Electrical and Information Technology; ELLIIT: the Linköping-Lund initiative on IT and mobile communication; Software Engineering Research Group
• Publishing year: 2016-02-23
• Language: English
• Pages: 5-6
• Publication/Series: Lärande i LTH
• Volume: 32
• Links: https://www.lth.se/fileadmin/lth/genombrottet/Laerande_i_LTH/La__rande_i_LTH_blad_32.pdf
• Document type: Newspaper article
• Publisher: Genombrottet, Lunds tekniska högskola
• Topic: Electrical Engineering, Electronic Engineering, Information Engineering
• Keywords: project; supervision
• Status: Published