Questions/guidelines prepared by the session moderator, Ismael Peña-López
- How did e-supervision tools/methodologies help in carrying out/supervising quality research?
- Was this an exposed way of carrying out research? What was the experience like?
- Does exposition increase the risks of plagiarism?
- Can it jeopardize the originality of the research required for a thesis?
- Can e-supervision contribute to
- better theoretical frameworks? Why?
- drafting better research questions and hypotheses? Why?
- designing better methodologies? Why?
- fieldwork? Why?
- better assessment? Why?
- better conclusions? Why?
- Can e-supervision be seen as an added burden – in terms of workload – to the process of doing/supervising a thesis?
- Can e-supervision be seen as an added burden – in matters of new skills – to the process of doing/supervising a thesis?
- What strategies could be put in place to avoid this extra burden and, instead, leverage the (supposed) potential of e-supervision?
- Can e-supervision become collective supervision?
- Can e-supervision become P2P supervision?
Round Table: From theory to practice: models, experiences, opportunities and challenges of e-supervision
Miquel Duran, Universitat de Girona (UdG), Spain
Open knowledge as a must for e-supervision.
Future is mobile, future is video.
Virtualization of supervision is real supervision.
Subject-dependent.
PhD MOOCization.
e-[something else][empathic]-supervision.
Technology should be transparent.
PhD students has to understand their new role as researchers in formation.
PhD students must contribute to local environment: dissemination, public engagement in science, etc.
There should be a contract/commitment between both parties. Likely a reward system.
Good referencing and curation.
e-Supervision, research 2.0, etc. is about attitudes. And attitude is a choice.
And supervision is about EMPATHY (e-supervision: empathy-supervision).
Doctoral course, on-the-spot: http://iscico.wikispaces.com
Francesc Balagué, Co-founder of Wonference
Today’s students are no longer the people our educational system was designed to teach
, Mark Prensky.
A triple interaction approach: supervisor – student – technology.
It is not about 1-to-1 relationships (student-to-supervisor) but about many-to-many, about collaboration, regardless of time and space.
In this change of paradigm, technology is not a tool, but an enabler.
The emergence of web sciences: technology has become a must to understand certain aspects of the world and, more important, to be able to do research about them.
But the change of paradigm may have a trade-off between quality and burden. We have to ensure that this is not an actual trade-off, and that we can go for quality without increasing the burden.
Challenges:
- Final product vs. co-creation.
- Individualism vs. collaboration.
- One-way assessment vs. P2P assessment.
Should we have only one or two tutors as usual?
Are supervisors ready to work as a network?
How can we collaborate with other students/supervisors.
We need new models and strategies to go for this new paradigm.
Ricardo Torres Kompen, PLE- consultant, Spain
PELICANS project: Personal and e-Learning in Communities and Networking Spaces.
It is more important the process than the tool.
e-Supervision and PLE are very related.
Strategies for e-supervision
- Explore: what tools, what sources/resources, how you discover new sources. Strategies for finding information, applications, etc. It’s about the PERSONAL in PLEs.
- Ccommunity: PLEs do not stand alone. It is about the PLN: personal learning network.
- Share: once networks are established, encourage to share, as it creates new channels of communication.
- Create: fix what is being learned.
- Flexibility: let the students have their own tools. What is important is not the tool, but the usage.
Training is crucial, but also circumstances and constrains: innovation is born from constrains.
What is important is the process: technology should not interfere in the process, technology should facilitate the process.
Ricard Espelt, PhD student, Universitat Rey Juan Carlos, Spain
There are benefits of publishing the research process, and not the only goal being publishing in journals.
The importance to share your discoveries while they happen, and not only at the end.
Blog one’s research:
- Accountability, especially before the taxpayer.
- The importance to keep track of one’s own research.
Technology enables browsing one’s own production in many ways, with different approaches.
Research has to be a forest, not a farm.
Discussion
Oskar Caquero: will the academia ever acknowledge or provide credit for the work done in blogs, wikis, etc. and not only journals? Ricard Espelt: it may be that the focus of this kind of tools is not to address the academia, but to address another community. Miquel Duran: it is very important to impact. And impacting can happen through journals, but also outside of them. On the other hand, it is likely that in a near future we will be able to set up new ways to assess impact, to assess how value is created for society, etc. Francesc Balagué: new ways of scientific production should definitely be recognized.
Xavier Gabarell: how do one manages so much time in doing “traditional” research and blogging and all other stuff? Miquel Duran: one needs a time management time. But it is not easy. Working as a team, though, helps a lot: thus, there is a distribution of tasks and while some do quantitative analysis others blog it.
Stephen Nyaga: maybe there should be a formal training on e-supervision, with both the student and the supervisor at the same time and sharing the tools and thr strategies. And to have a good strategy to set up new policies that deal with these issues, to convince people to share good practices. Miquel Duran: surely the rewards are not (only) on money, but in many other forms. But some rewards should be put in practice, whatever their kind, and definitely recognized. Ricardo Torres: this is going to take time, but it will pay back in the future… but maybe not in the near future… like learning itself.
Miquel Duran: what about flipped supervision?
Ismael Peña-López: Devil’s advocate: can a non-scholar, a non-supervisor, a non-doctor supervise, help, assess a PhD supervision? Is that “qualitatively” possible?
Ismael Peña-López: How distracting can be “fancy” technology? Is that part of the process?
Sioux McKenna: e-supervision cannot be made compulsory. It is about showing the academic benefits of doing e-supervision.
Olive Mugenda: is everything shareable? can everything be open? Ricardo Torres: the problem with some research is that it is too recent or new that there is nothing published… but there actually is lots of stuff in other platforms. This is definitely a reason for opening up not final research but the whole process.
