Confident Supervisors addresses critical challenges in resourcing and support for graduate research studies within higher education. The project team identified a gap in open education resources (OERs) aimed at supporting graduate supervisors. The response was the development of this OER which includes versatile and comprehensive resources such as downloadable files and online materials, text, videos, and linked content. Supervisors facing unique challenges that require timely responses, have found this an invaluable resource delivering immediate advice and guidance. Notably, supervisors from smaller universities and universities in less developed countries with limited access to support and resourcing are deeply appreciative of this eBook’s highly accessible and userfriendly resources. Confident Supervisors has delivered on its aim to offer high-quality professional development and guidance for supervisors globally.
Readers of Confident Supervisors benefit from the expertise of more than 30 authors, editors and reviewers who are current supervisors and research services partners engaged in the scholarship of supervision. From Australia, New Zealand, United States, Europe and Papua New Guinea, the authors bring interdisciplinary supervisory expertise in biochemistry, communications, education, engineering, health, Indigenous studies, information sciences, psychology, and sciences, and professional expertise as researcher developers, careers consultants, librarians and policy advisors.
Authors drew on their expertise and scholarship to create chapters on key topics of current relevance and concern. Chapters have been crafted to deliver transferrable knowledge, advice and resources that readily informs practice. Authors introduce cutting edge theoretical frameworks and concepts, some developed and refined for the eBook, to provide supervisors with tools and strategies that can be applied in addressing the diversity of challenges and opportunities facing research supervisors.
The resulting eBook is a discrete and convenient point of reference written by graduate research supervisors and developers for graduate research supervisors and developers to support them realising contemporary practices. Authors for chapters were selected based on their scholarship, experience and readiness to contribute to the open access project. They each provided a 3,500 word chapter, a biography, and an introductory video to elaborate on their contributions and highlight key learnings.
Editors developed a template for the chapters, a style guide and author’s guide to support authors in creating chapters to meet the design framework. Reviewers were provided with guidelines to ensure consistency and rigour for the peer review process. The JCU Library Open eBook team integrated universal design for learning principles and maintained high standards for the publication’s copyright compliance, editing and formatting. There is evidence that readers are engaging with author profiles while chapter content has stimulated deeper interest in their scholarship.
Across global higher education, graduate student supervisors play a pivotal role supporting student candidature. However, many are not positioned to access learning opportunities and resources to grow and improve their practice. Confident Supervisors is filling this gap, and the evidence provided demonstrates the eBook is meeting its objective of offering supervisors high-quality, accessible, open access professional development and guidance.
Award Nominator
The eBook’s large, multidisciplinary author team enhances its relevance across higher education disciplines, and this relevance will be further expanded with updated and new chapters planned for the second edition. This eBook is making an important contribution to the field of graduate education supervision.
I loved the use of multiple perspectives. I believe this text is helping a lot of people all over the world to look at the idea of supervision in a new way and hopefully become better supervisors in the process.
Award Reviewer
This is a really useful resource that I am sure many can benefit from, and there are diverse perspectives such that I think most people would find something in here. I love that there is a case study from a developing country (I wish there were more). I love that there is a section on supervising Indigenous research and researchers. I love that there is a section on teaching non-native speakers of the language. And the early chapters seem to be useful across the board. I love that there are handouts and activities one could do, and the short videos at the beginning and clear bullet points of key points of the chapter can help someone decide whether or not it will be relevant to them.
Award Reviewer
