We set up a Master thesis studio for master students in Pedagogical Sciences at the VU Amsterdam
As a supervisor to students who write their theses, you often get a lot of e-mails from students, like “The assumptions of doing an ANOVA are violated, what do I have to do now?” or “You asked whether my study has enough power, but how do I do a power analysis?”. If you have supervised students for many years, it is likely that you receive these questions almost every year. It takes a lot of time answering these questions and ideally, students are encouraged to find answers to these questions by themselves using information from earlier in the curriculum.
The problem
In the Master program pedagogical sciences, we felt that many students were insecure about writing their master thesis which resulted in a lot of questions and supervision time for their supervisors. Questions were often the same across students, supervisors and even academic years. We were searching for a sustainable solution making the supervision process more efficient.
Our solution
We designed a program called “Master thesis studio”: These were monthly, online sessions in which we give support to the students and gave supervisors the opportunity to answer questions in a group setting.
The parts of the sessions were:
A plenary session of around 40 minutes. A lecturer gave a short, interactive presentation about a topic of the thesis process, such as academic writing or data analysis. There was room for questions from and interaction with the students. This part was also recorded and recordings were made available to students, so that students could watch it back whenever they needed to.
A peer session of around 20 minutes. In break-out rooms, students got to work together on some aspect of their thesis, for example conducting a power analysis, and they were instructed to give feedback to each other. They could exchange tips and tricks and profit from each other’s knowledge.
A session with the supervisor of around 20 minutes. The supervisor could use this time to meet with all of his or her students to give general feedback to all of them. Also, students could ask questions and feedback from the supervisor.
Lessons learnt
The sessions were very well attended. Using recordings, we provided students with the possibility to also profit from the sessions afterwards. Some supervisors made use of our sessions for group supervision and Q&A’s. When students gave feedback to each other’s work, we already saw in some theses improved quality. However, students were reluctant to use the peer sessions independently to give each other feedback and exchange experiences. They needed concrete tasks and visible incentives to see the advantage. Supervisors also not always made use of the sessions due to lack of time or other reasons. Also, timing of the topics was not always aligned with the progress of the thesis. Next year, we want to align the sessions better to the progress of the thesis writing. Moreover, we want to teach the students the advantages of giving peer feedback and we also want to advertise the Master thesis studio to supervisors, so that they can profit from it. We ended this academic year with evaluation forms for students and supervisors to learn from their experience and improve the Master thesis studio next year.
Questions?
If you have any questions about or suggestions for the Master thesis studio: please get in contact. We appreciate feedback from supervisors and students (from any university) alike and want the Master thesis studio to be an advantage for everyone.