Confident Supervisors has significant impact

The e-book 'Confident Supervisors: Creating independent researchers' was announced winner of the Significant Impact award at the recent Open Education Global awards ceremony. The Cairns Institute adjunct Dr Susan Gasson explained how the book addressed critical challenges in resourcing and support for graduate research studies within higher education.

A gap in open education resources (OERs) aimed at supporting graduate supervisors was identified by the project team' whose response was the development of this OER. It included 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. In particular, 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 user-friendly resources.

Readers 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, 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 introduced 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.

Editors from James Cook University (JCU) and Queensland University of Technology (QUT) 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. Read here.