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Humanising Online Postgraduate Supervision During a Crisis

Presenter

Dr Nompilo Tshuma holds a PhD (Information Systems) from Rhodes University. She is a lecturer and researcher in the Centre for Higher and Adult Education at Stellenbosch University. She has been working with educational technology since 2005, as both a lecturer and an academic developer. In her current role she is the institutional coordinator for a regional PG Diploma in Higher Education. She also teaches modules in the Centre's two MPhil programmes and supervises Masters and PhD students. As a critical educational technology researcher, she uses social and critical theories to explore the context and politics of higher education, and their impact on educational technology practices.

Abstract

Humanising Online Postgraduate Supervision During a Crisis

Postgraduate research supervision is a complex activity that involves supporting students as they join and contribute to a knowledge community. Research studies have indicated that this supervision process is often fraught with tensions which can impact the supervisory relationship as well as the completion of postgraduate studies.  In addition, it affects how well the students are inducted into the knowledge community and their development as independent researchers. Research has also shown that these tensions are often aggravated in South African higher education due to the country’s unique historical context and the impact of this history on postgraduate demographics in different disciplines. A humanising approach to supervision seeks to recognise postgraduate scholars as individual, coming into the postgraduate environment from different contexts, bringing with them different ways of knowing and being in the discipline, and therefore needing different forms of induction into the knowledge community. This presentation considers the above tensions in light of the additional restrictions imposed by Covid-19 lockdowns as well as how supervisors at different universities have used technology to support this humanising pedagogy. The presentation considers what technologies have been used and draws on supervisors’ reflections of the support supported by these technologies in terms of humanising their approach to supervision during the current lockdown period.