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

The course A293/05 PhD-student as supervisor for undergraduate students – how and when? is being offered by the Graduate School of Health, Aarhus University, fall 2022.

Criteria for participation: University degree in medicine, dentistry, nursing, or master’s degree in other fields and/or postgraduate research fellows (PhD students and research-year medical students). The course is designed for participants who perform co-supervision of undergraduate students. However, it is not crucial that the PhD student co-supervise undergraduate students in the period of the course.

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 a 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 requirements and responsibilities of the different supervisor and co-supervisor roles,
• Provide feedback to undergraduate students’ written or oral presentation in a way that facilitates the undergraduate students’ learning process, and
• Acquire knowledge about undergraduate students’ expectations and interests to balance 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 1-2 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

Between the two course days, participants complete an assignment related to their practice. The assignment may include reading relevant text or seeing relevant videos. In addition, participants read 1-2 articles.

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

• Discussions and peer-feedback on the participants’ assignments
• Product and process in the supervision – who controls the undergraduates’ project?
• The art of asking questions that promote learning in supervision

Instructors: Mette Krogh Christensen and colleagues from Centre for Educational Development, Aarhus University.

Venue:  Building 1910, room 228 at Centre for Educational Development, Aarhus University, Trøjborgvej 88, 8000 Aarhus.

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:

• 26 September 2022
• 05 October 2022 09:00 - 15:00
• 02 November 2022 09:00 - 15:00