Supporting students during their undergraduate research projects using audio recordings

ABSTRACT

Undergraduate final year research projects are part of many degree programmes and help students enhance a variety of transferable skills. A challenge for supervisors is encouraging students to develop as independent learners, while simultaneously providing support and structure for a successful, timely completion. In this project, we trialled a student-centred supervision approach where all supervisory meetings were concluded by producing audio recordings of students summarising the discussion. The recordings were emailed to the students who were instructed to write and return a short reflection to the supervisor. Students found that the audio summaries ensured that they stayed engaged and focused during the meetings. The recordings helped them understand and remember the issues discussed and encouraged them to take ownership of their project. Willingness and ability to reflect, however, were patchy, indicating that students may need more training in the skills of reflection earlier on in their studies.

KEYWORDS:

• Undergraduate
• research project
• dissertation
• supervision
• student-centred
• reflection
• audio recording
• independent learning

Acknowledgements

We would like to thank Dr Janis McIntyre for commenting on the manuscript and our project students who made this study possible.

Notes

1. In this study, the terms ‘research project’ and ‘dissertation’ are used interchangeably.