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Effective master’s thesis supervision – connecting research and practice

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Supervising master’s thesis students is a unique and personal teaching setting – you work with a student one-on-one for many months to develop their research, academic writing, and project management skills. But thesis supervision is also complex, challenging, and can often be time consuming. 

In this workshop, we share best practices for effectively and efficiently supervising master’s students based on a systematic literature review we performed, and insights from hundreds of supervisors we have worked with at the School of Business and Economics. We will share the tools and products we have developed to support our colleagues and students to inspire both supervisors and educational/faculty developers.

By the end of this workshop, participants will:

  • Develop strategies for understanding and managing the student-supervisor relationship based on student characteristics and your own competences,
  • Identify opportunities for fostering students’ learning outcomes through adaptive supervision behaviours,
  • Exchanged and evaluated strategies for managing expectations, monitoring student progress, providing feedback, and having difficult conversations with your students.

This activity may count towards your Continuing Professional Development (CPD) if relevant to your situation.

About the trainers

Laurie Delnoij is assistant professor in educational assessment in the Department of Educational Research & Development at the School of Business and Economics. Her research focuses on creating evidence-based best practices for fair and valid assessments. She has also been a thesis coordinator for the master’s Learning & Development in Organisations, piloting a series of personalised learning tools designed to help students become more effective researchers and academic writers.

Therese Grohnert is an associate professor in professional learning at the same department, and her educational research seeks to establish evidence-based practices to support thesis supervisors, tutors, and course coordinators. A former thesis coordinator at SBE, she has contributed to the faculty’s redesign of the master’s thesis process, integrating ethics and sustainability, and works with Laurie on educational innovation projects to continuously improve the effectiveness of students’ thesis journey.

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