Supervision

Your personal supervisor will continue in their role in providing pastoral care if required and your dissertation supervisors will provide the academic support required for your project. Occasionally, there may be overlap between non-academic issues and your dissertation, for example if circumstances arise where you may need to apply for an extension.   Once you have been assigned your supervisors please contact them to arrange your first meeting. We envisage that you should have around two meetings each month with a maximum of 8 hours contact time. These meetings may be in person or online depending on what you and your supervisors prefer and a record of these meetings should be made on eVision: e:Vision and your student record - Student home, University of York).

The focus of your first supervision meeting will be to discuss and develop your proposal further.  You may also find it useful to make some additional notes about your topic before you meet, thinking about:

• Why you have chosen to focus on your topic

• Why you have identified the method that you have

• How your module choices enable you to undertake the method you have identified

Before you meet:

• Share an agenda for your meeting with your supervisor.

• Share any documents in advance of your meeting so your supervisors have the opportunity if they wish to read them prior to the meeting. 

After your supervision meeting: 

• Schedule time after your meeting for reflection and making notes. 

• Use eVision to keep a record of key discussions and action points.

Expectations of your supervisor(s)

Remember it is your project and you should take the initiative in submitting written work for input from your supervisors. You should give sufficient time for them to respond and whilst they will provide constructive feedback including providing guidance on the scope of your project and how to structure your dissertation they are not expected to write sections or to proof-read your dissertation.    

If you are struggling with any aspect of your dissertation please raise the issue with your supervisors and if that does not work, speak to your programme lead, another academic member of staff in the Department or the Graduate School Association.

Studying from a distance

For students who may need to complete all or some components of their dissertation at a distance it is important that you discuss this with your supervisors in advance to make sure it is feasible. Email, telephone and Zoom are useful resources for supervision meetings and your supervision team may be able to agree a schedule of remote supervision sessions. Additionally, students who are considering doing the dissertation at distance should check if there are any barriers to doing this in relation to access to data and data security. While the majority of students will not have the opportunity to conduct primary research for their dissertation, for those that do propose to use primary data, studying away from the UK might entail restrictions on availability of data and transfer of data using electronic means. Again, it is important to discuss this as early as possible with your supervisors and to ensure that you follow the departmental and university guidance on data security.

If you are a Tier 4 visa holder and you wish to complete your dissertation away from the University you should consult the University’s guidance.

If you are struggling with any aspect of your dissertation please raise the issue with your supervisors and if that does not work, speak to your programme lead, dissertation module lead, another academic member of staff in the Department or the Graduate School Association.