The Future of Education

Internationally, academics are expected to provide high quality supervision of post-graduate student research, even though some of them may have limited experience of research beyond their own postgraduate degrees, and no experience of supervising students. This paper reports and reflects on an initiative undertaken at a South African university to support novice supervisors. A series of on-line modules was designed to form the core of the initiative, with one face-to-face session at the beginning, mid-point and end of each module. Data for this case study of responses to the academic literacies module were drawn from the on-line content, module participants’ assignments and portfolio, the reports of the module’s external reviewers, the external examiner’s report, informal interviews with three lecturers who completed the module  and the module designer and facilitator’s journal. Content analysis of this data suggests that while the module was praised for its academic depth and rigour by those who completed it successfully and by the external examiner, the external reviewers raised questions about the accessibility of its content for academics not well versed in education and associated disciplines, some of whom may have failed to complete the module for this reason. The findings that while each of the three academics interviewed enjoyed the freedom of ‘own time study’, they printed a hard copy of the core content and many of the readings available on-line, and neither they nor the module designer/facilitator participated in the module’s on-line discussion forum as frequently or as fully as had been anticipated, suggest that neither the participants nor the designer/facilitator made optimal use of the affordances of the on-line environment. The latter was employed for her expertise in the field of academic literacies. Her limited knowledge of digital technologies and the possibilities of the on-line environment may have contributed to less than optimal course design and delivery, suggesting that for future course design and facilitation, either the designer/facilitator should be knowledgeable in both course content and on-line pedagogies or there should be a design and facilitation team with distributed expertise.                        

Keywords: blended learning; academic literacies module; postgraduate supervision support;