Guidelines for PhD Annual Progress Monitoring Meetings
The following are additional guidelines to support your arrangements for your PhD students’ annual progress and mid-session meetings. They take the form of
Frequently Asked Questions and supplement the information given on the form itself which you can find on the Graduate School website/documents and forms page: http://www2.hull.ac.uk/student/graduateschool/documentsandforms.aspx
When should the annual monitoring meeting be held?
Every year for 3 years at a point roughly corresponding with the student’s anniversary of registration. For students who registered at the end of September
(the majority) you may prefer to hold the meeting before the summer vacation, and this is indeed advisable if there is any risk the student may need an emergency progress meeting before the start of the next academic year. As long as the student feels ready to submit work and attend the meeting it can be held any time between the Spring and September. You should try to ensure that a student whose work is not of doctoral standard does not register as a student for the next academic year.
This is costly to the student and sends out a misleading message that their work is good enough to be continued.
Should Part-Time students only be monitored once every two years instead of annually?
No, they should be monitored annually, but less should be expected of them, given that they are taking longer over their studies. It’s essential that they’re not left to work on their own for as long as two years without some formal assessment. The same goes for the 6-month mid-term review meeting: this should still happen at the mid-point of each of their five years of study.
Should students on extension be annually monitored?
Yes; they are still entitled to 6 supervisory meetings a year and it is in their interests to be annually/6 monthly monitored so as to motivate them to finish.
Who fills in what and when?

The departmental administrator should complete the first/cover page
(including number of supervisory meetings held), and then pass it electronically to the student to fill in Section I (pages 2-4).

The Principal Supervisor completes Section 2, which is shown to the student before the meeting.

At (or soon after) the meeting, the Supervisor completes Section 3.

The meeting Chair completes Section 4 and signs off the agreed decision.

Copies should be sent to the student, the supervisors and the Graduate
School as well as being kept in the department for reference. Your Faculty
Administrator may also wish to have copies.
Please remember to complete every section: we have received a lot of incomplete forms this year! We don’t , however, need to see the student’s sample chapter.
Who should chair the progress meeting?
Meetings should be chaired by a senior colleague who is not the student’s supervisor (first or second): ideally by the Postgraduate Research Director for your department (if you have one), the Head of Department, or a Professor or Reader.
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What’s the Chair’s role in these meetings?
The Chair should invite the panel/supervisors to attend 15 minutes before the student arrives to plan the format of the meetings, and discuss any issues or concerns about the student’s progress. When the student arrives, the Chair should introduce her/himself and explain the format of the session. This must include discussion of the following: a) PGTS credits gained b) Chapter outlines for the thesis c) Feasibility of the timeline to submission d) The working bibliography
Should the Chair read the student’s submitted work?
Ideally, yes, but see below for alternatives. At the very least someone in the room other than the first supervisor should have read the submitted work. This is usually the second supervisor, but the panel will be more worthwhile if the Chair has also read it.
Does the same person have to chair all the progress meetings in the department?
No: this may be too onerous a responsibility if you have a lot of PhD students or a wide range of specialist areas in your department. A good option would be to have a team of Chairs, who have agreed on principles for running these meetings, and who can share and discuss any difficulties arising.
Who asks the questions in the meeting?
Questions may be asked by the Chair and Second Supervisor or any other panel members. The Principal/First supervisor should not be asking the questions, but may of course participate in the discussion.
Who else should attend the meeting?
The key attendees are the student, and the two supervisors. Other academic staff may attend, but the occasion shouldn’t be made too intimidating.
What work (if any) should be submitted to the meeting?
Depending on norms for the discipline, the work submitted should be substantial enough for the panel to be able to make a judgement as to the student’s satisfactory progress: ideally a chapter of the thesis.
Should formal reports be submitted after the meeting?
The Progress monitoring form provides sections for comments on the quality of the material as well as decisions made. If a longer report is needed this may be separately/additionally submitted (as with the Formal Assessment Procedure below).
How does the Formal Assessment Procedure relate to the Annual
Progression meeting?
The Formal Assessment Procedure (see Quality Handbook on the Portal: QH: L3b) is essentially a hangover from when applicants were first admitted as probationer
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M.Phil students, and formally ‘upgraded’ to PhD status at the end of their first year of study. It will be reviewed by the Research Degrees Committee in the coming year as the process is very similar to the standard annual progress meeting procedure, except that it requires the assessors to produce written reports on the submitted work. The following is an extract from the Code of Practice: “
No fewer than two written reports, or a single report written jointly by those referred to in paragraph
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, evaluating the work submitted must be produced by the department”. These reports should be written in such a way that they can be shown to the student before being submitted to the Graduate School:
The student is also asked to produce more work:
“Required written work:
The requirements for consideration of the Formal Assessment Procedure must be specified in writing at initial registration. While the specific requirements will vary from discipline to discipline the following should be adhered to:
 An overall summary of the research and theme(s)/questions to be addressed
 The organisation of the thesis and the chapter headings
 A statement of progress to date
 A schedule and plan for further research
 A literature review
 A draft chapter or evidence of substantive critical writing (such as an introduction to the research problem or a discussion of met hodology).”
As the paperwork is otherwise the same as that used for the other annual monitoring meeting, you may combine the two procedures and simply make the end of first year meeting more formal, with written reports submitted.
What if the student’s work isn’t considered good enough for progression to be approved?
You can – and should- offer them an emergency progress meeting in two months’ time
– and set them a specific task which would be feasible within this period
(either revision of the submitted work or something else). If the student is ‘nearly there’, a further emergency progress meeting may be held. Otherwise the student should either be offered change of status to Master’s level, or advised that it is not in their interests to continue with their programme.
Should there be a panel of assessors for the 6-month mid-term assessment meeting? No: this is a more informal structured conversation between the student and one or both supervisors.
Should you send the paperwork to the Graduate School?
No, we don’t need to see the paperwork for the 6-month review to the Graduate
School unless the student has made a complaint on the back page.
Any more questions? Please contact Valerie Sanders
( V.R.Sanders@hull.ac.uk
) if you have any questions on issues not covered here.
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