A Personal Reflective Account on the Supervisory Role (2)
Hammadi Nait-Charif
1. Introduction
In many university departments it is the PhD students who do much of the research and
scientific publications. It is also the PhD students who bring a youthful, challenging
stimulus to departments (Fery et al. 2006). The National Centre for Computer Animation
is not really that different as demonstrated by our RAE submission. The majority of
academic staff who were included in the submission have supervised PhD students or
research fellows. Therefore successful supervision does benefit not only the student, but
the supervisor and the university as well.
In many research areas, research is intrinsically multi, cross, or inter-disciplinary and the
presence of a more diverse supervisory team is sometimes not only desirable, but
necessary.
However, having larger supervisory team is challenging for all parties, students,
supervisors and universities. In this document I will reflect on the advantages and
challenges associated with such joint supervisory scheme.
2. Joint Supervision
In multidisciplinary disciplines such as computer animation, supervisors are in many times
constrained to become multidisciplinary themselves. I joined the NCCA from an
Engineering background, and I hardly new any thing about the art side of computer
animation. And during the last couple of years, I have learnt a lot, and I have acquired
some artistic knowledge that is involved in computer animation. This has enabled me to
have meaningful meetings with research students who are working on computer animation
projects. However I am convinced that the presence of a member of staff with artistic
background is necessary of better student-supervisor meetings.
As supervisor, I would prefer to be part of supervisory team comprising artist, computer
scientists and mathematicians. This joint supervisory scheme would very beneficial for
students as well as supervisors.
3. Students & Joint Supervision
As I mentioned in the previous section, the students would very much benefit from joint
supervision. The can have experts in different field of knowledge to interact with.
However, if the scheme is not managed well or not understood by the student he may find
himself distract but different approach by different members of the supervisory team.
Student should be very careful when taking on suggestions/advices form different people
who do not necessary have the same supervision style.
4. Supervisors in Joint Supervision scheme.
Computer animation brings together scientist and artists and the majority of our PhD
students should have good scientific and artistic background. As far as supervision is
concerned, the ideal situation would be to have a wider supervisory team which is not
limited to the first and second supervisors. More people with diverse background would
be involved. However, having many academic staff involved in the supervision of the same
project needs to be managed properly. Each member has his own supervision style but
they should not give contradicting suggestion to students. It is natural to have different
point of views, especially during supervision meeting where the research topic is debated,
however care should be taken not to confuse the student. Also problems between the
team members should be dealt with away from the student. I have witnessed a case were
the problems between first and second supervisors are passed on to the student; and
each supervisor tried to make the student sidelines with him. It is very depressing,
especially for international students who have a different cultural/religious background
where supervisors are held as models.
The is always an assumption that we the academics “know it all”. The majority if not all
the academics in universities are employed to teach and supervise students without ever
having any training on the best teaching and supervising methods. If “joint supervision
scheme” is to be adopted, supervisors should go through some sort of training and
awareness on the advantages and challenges of such scheme. The seminar given by Dr
Eloise Carr and Dr Jerry Carr would be very beneficial to all supervisors.
5. University & Joint Supervision
Many academic staff are willing to be involved in the supervision even without time
remission as many of them have not yet supervised to completion any PhD student. This
“willing” is only temporary, but once they are able to supervise PhD students
themselves, it will not be easy to get them in a team without considering some time
remission. And the question here is how much support the university is prepared to give
to such scheme. Having more academics involved in supervision of a single students does
necessary drain the available time form the supervisors. And even in the actual 1 st and 2nd
supervisors scheme, the second supervisor doe not get any time remission.
2. Conclusion
I think that joined supervision is the way forward in the computer animation discipline.
But in the same time I will be very careful when choosing the team or accepting to part of
a team. The time load is a very important factor in defining proper supervision.
Supervision should be done properly or declined.
Also I’ll be looking very closely the academic and cultural background of all my student
and try to find the best way to provide them with the best supervision I can.
References
G. Fry, B Tress and G. Tress, 2006. PhD Student and Integrative Research. In From Landscape
Research to Landscape planning, Aspect of Integration, Published by Springer, 2006, p. 193205.