Course PhD-student as supervisor for undergraduate students – how and when?

The course A293/07 PhD-student as supervisor for undergraduate students – how and when? is being offered by the Graduate School of Health, Aarhus University, 2023.

Criteria for participation: University degree in medicine, dentistry, nursing, or master’s degree in other fields and/or postgraduate research fellows (PhD students). 

Participants can sign up for this course if they are currently co-supervising undergraduate students. However, participants who plan to act as a co-supervisor soon or who previously have had actual experiences as co-supervisors are also welcome, if the number of seats allows it.

Recommended knowledge for participation: This course is relevant for all PhD students who wish to improve the quality of their supervision of undergraduate students.      

Aim: As a part of their teaching responsibilities, PhD-students sometimes act as co-supervisors for undergraduate students’ bachelor projects, written assignments, master thesis, or research year assignments. In doing so, the PhD-students play an important role as near-peer-supervisor guiding the students in their learning. This course aims to prepare PhD-students for their role as co-supervisors on undergraduate students’ assignments and/or learning processes.    

Learning outcomes: By the end of the course, the participants can:

• discuss and reflect on the requirements and responsibilities of the different supervisor and co-supervisor roles,
• provide feedback to undergraduate students’ written or oral presentations in a way that facilitates the undergraduate students’ learning process, and
• acquire knowledge about undergraduate students’ expectations and interests to balance the supervisor’s control and undergraduate students’ control of their projects.

Workload: The full workload of the course is expected to be 50 hours.

Content: Before the first day of the course, participants read approx. two articles and prepare a few online learning activities about their actual experiences with the supervision of undergraduate students.

The main themes of the first day of the course are:

• The roles, requirements, and responsibilities of the PhD-student as a co-supervisor
• The power of feedback – how to provide feedback that promotes learning?
• Alignment of expectations and interests

Participants complete an assignment related to their supervision practice between the two course days. The assignment may include reading relevant texts, seeing relevant videos, and observing a real supervision situation. In addition, participants read 1-2 articles as preparation for the second course day.

The main themes of the second day of the course are:

• Discussions and peer-feedback on the participants’ assignments
• Supervision in different learning situations, e.g., supervision in the lab
• The art of asking questions that promote learning in supervision

Instructors: Colleagues from Centre for Educational Development, Aarhus University.

Venue:  Centre for Educational Development, Aarhus University, Trøjborgvej 88, 8000 Aarhus.

Preparation: May 1st – May 8th, 2023 (self-paced online course assignments at Brightspace)

Module 1 in-class: May 10th, 2023, at 09.00 – 15.00

Assignments and observation of supervision: May 11th – June 2nd, 2023

Module 2 in-class: June 7th, 2023, at 09.00 – 15.00

Participation in the course is without cost for:

• PhD students, Health Research Year students and Health Research Honours Programme students from Aarhus University
• PhD students enrolled at partner universities of the Nordoc collaboration
• PhD students from other institutions in the open market agreement for PhD courses

Course dates:

• 10 May 2023 09:00 - 15:00
• 07 June 2023 09:00 - 15:00