Supervision

As student numbers have increased, many of the traditional forms of individual contact between staff and students have declined. Regular and continuing "tutorials" seem to have been largely abandoned in all but the best-funded Universities; pressure on staff time has seriously curtailed availability for casual enquiries on an "open-door" basis, and led to the uptake of "office hours". Today, one-to-one contact most often occurs in the context of project supervision, greatly adding to the significance of this role in the students' development.

Project supervision is an activity that encompasses several aspects, including:

Technical Assistance: Because project students typically rely (in the first instance) on their supervisor for detailed technical assistance it is most common that supervisors take on projects in their areas of expertise. There are several allocation mechanisms [see, for example, 2.1, 2.2. and 2.3] that address this. The driver for providing this sort of assistance is most often demand from the supervisee(s) and the supervisory input is reactive.
Engineering Processes: Especially in large scale (or group) projects there is an increasing reliance on effective use of engineering processes by the students. Sometimes processes are prescribed (typically where all students are doing the same project) but where this is not the case, they are often required to choose appropriate processes for the demands of their task. The driver for giving this form of assistance is often failure (or imminent failure) of the students' process, spotted by the supervisor: the supervisory input is proactive.
Personal and Professional Development: Many of the problems encountered by students during large-scale and long-term pieces of work are connected with external circumstances rather than the work itself. These may be concerned with the difficulties of working within a group, with legal, ethical or property rights, or with the students' real life. The drivers for giving personal or professional development assistance are as often concerns raised by other stakeholders as they are problems observed in (or by) the student immediately involved.

These aspects are rarely distinct or discrete, but are all part of the activity of supervising a project and must be taken into account.

Where more than one member of staff supervises projects, look for inconsistency among them.

Many project instances assume that there is a consensus amongst supervisors as to the aims and objectives of the instance, and a consistency of approach between supervisors in addressing those objectives. This can, indeed be the case among a stable group of supervisors where such a consensus has been developed (maybe implicitly) over time, but the privacy of the supervisor-student relationship makes such a consistency difficult to demonstrate. In any event, new supervisors being bought into such a culture will not have the benefit of this history, and must (at least) be indoctrinated into the zeitgeist.

An apparent collective understanding may, without having a noticeable effect on assessment outcomes, conceal wide disparities in affective goals (of supervisors as well as students). Consequently, either:

Formulate agreed goals for the project instance.: This is in keeping with the current climate of specification of expected student learning outcomes and experience, but can be difficult to assure across a large pool of supervisors.
Factor the disparate approaches of supervisors into the assessment criteria used: This can be easier to implement if the supervisory load is shared (as it often is) by a wide variety of staff, but may require an additional step in the assessment process to account for the supervisor's contribution to the students' achievements, as well as recognition of the potential variability of that input.
Use a smaller pool of supervisors, and expend more effort on entraining them in forming a consensus.: This approach has been used successfully even with single supervisors taking on quite large cohorts, but requires dedication from the staff involved, and co-operation from those apportioning teaching loads. Unless care is taken, it can also lead to a decrease in the types of projects offered, to the detriment of the ability of students to express their enthusiasms.

Cost

Supervision is an expensive activity, both at a departmental and individual level. There are two principal ways to address this. One is to maximise the use of currently available resource (staff time), exemplified by bundle 5.2 Loosely co-ordinated groups; another is to supplement, augment or otherwise increase the scarce resource. An example of this is given in 5.4, The Supervisor's Eyes and Ears.

Projects are (usually) conducted over a long period of time for large credit. There is a need to intercept failure early

At one extreme, it is possible to construe project supervision as simply a "fly on the wall" activity, with students being allowed to follow their own paths, even to the extent of being unable to deliver anything at the end of the day. This is rarely taken to be an effective learning process. Thus it is concomitant on the supervisor to attempt to detect such pathological behaviour, and to help the student to change it before it is too late. At the other extreme, supervisors can control students' behaviour to the extent that students have no creative (high-level) input to the work they are doing and are effectively unable to fail.

It is particularly difficult to keep students on track if there is no track. The first task of a supervisor is thus to ensure that students make (or buy, or copy) a map. The second task is to help them follow it - to an appropriate extent. The simple existence of a map (whether a project plan, or a series of interim deliverables) does not imply that students should always be penalised for deviation (there may be a better way), but does provide a common reference against which student and supervisor can reflect on and discuss progress. Such intermediate supervisory input can be useful in affecting working practices, whether it is to alter the bad or assist in the good.

Conflict between supervisor/assessor role

Where a supervisor is also responsible for assessing a project, there are inevitable tensions between the two roles. Students may perceive that advice given by the supervisor is coloured by their separate duty to assess them. So they may form the perception that the supervisor is withholding (or giving) particular advice not to support and develop the students' own thinking, but as part of their role in assessment.

There may, in fact, be a conflict between what students should do in order to complete a project in its own terms, and what they should do in order to maximise the mark awarded. In an ideal world, with assessment strategies completely aligned with the work undertaken, this would not be the case, but projects are often deliberately artificial in their nature. For instance, it is often the case that quite small projects are used to give students practice in the deployment of software engineering processes only applicable to far larger instances. In this case, the rational supervisor would advise students that it was better to use much simpler processes in the work, but assessment objectives dictate otherwise.

In institutions where examinations are marked "blind", projects are probably the most significant pieces of work undertaken by students in which their identity is visible. Indeed, blind marking of exams is often adopted precisely to combat the unwanted effects of the relationship between students and staff that is claimed as a major benefit of the project experience.

Stuff happens

Things always happen. They are always unexpected. This section has been compiled from anecdote, "war-stories" and bar-room discussions with many colleagues. None of the problems presented here may ever happen to you, but something will. The important thing is to retain the expectation that there will be an exceptional circumstance somewhere and to have (even half-formed) contingency strategies.

The supervisor is not expert in the subject area or in regard to student process.: The mix of projects which students are interested in undertaking often does not match the mix of staff available to supervise them. Research-oriented staff may have a partial understanding of the requirements of process-based projects. [See also 4.6, Horses for Courses].
Conflation of student problems: . Some students will have problems in areas other than their project work. Equally, students (particularly "traditional" 18-year old students) are not very good at separating areas of work and their emotional reactions to them. Given the personal nature of the supervisory process, these will often impact on projectwork - where they don't really belong [see also section nine Motivation].
Student time management - conflicting priorities: Projectwork, especially undertaken in groups, can consume far more time than its assessment-worth. Be prepared to make them work less on the project - even if it is your pet idea.
Late breaking failure: Students are good at covering up lack of progress, both their own and that of other non-functioning members of their group. Potential failures discovered near the end of a large project are far more difficult to retrieve.
Ducking for the tape: Where projects finish near the end of an assessment period there is no scope for extension. This is an artificial situation leaving students having to make a decision about what to omit from their delivered work. This will be conditioned by assessment criteria rather than by software engineering realities.
Project turns out too simple/complex: Especially where students specify their own projects it can be difficult to judge an appropriate and comparable level of complexity.
Group geography: Students who live together interact differently. So do students who live far apart.
Role allocation - star and forced-drone: In a group situation where students allocate their own roles, as well as the familiar reliance on the skills of one or two members there is a potential problem with a competent student being assigned (or taking on) a role which does not allow them to demonstrate their abilities.