The National Academy for Integration of Research and Teaching and Learning (NAIRTL) funded a major project to develop a national framework to support supervisors of postgraduate research students.  As part of this project, the National Academy carried out a survey across the partner institutes (UCC, CIT, NUI Galway, TCD, CIT and WIT) to examine the priorities of academic and research staff for optimising support for supervisors.

Respondents identified three areas as high priority for training and support: writing the thesis and publications; providing constructive criticism and fostering independence; and managing a research group. Generic workshops and case studies were considered to be the most suitable delivery method for the majority of training areas, while training on managing a research group, or on writing a thesis and publications were considered more suitable to be delivered in discipline specific workshops.

The survey findings will help create the development of a national framework to provide support for academic supervisors of postgraduate students.

Please visit http://www.nairtl.ie/supervisorsurvey to read the full survey report.

To encourage the sharing of experience and to further investigate how to enhance support for supervisors, NAIRTL has set up a Supervisor Forum at http://www.nairtl.ie/forum where supervisors can post comments and questions on a whole range of topics relating to the supervision of postgraduate research students.

The National Academy holds its Annual Conference on November 11th/12th 2009 in Trinity College Dublin.  Abstract submissions are invited for a paper, workshop or poster at the conference based on one of the following themes:

• Research-enhanced teaching and learning
• Scholarship of Teaching and Learning
• Graduate Education

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