Doctoral writing and remote supervision: What the literature tells us

ABSTRACT

Remote supervision of doctoral writers became the norm in 2020 when university campuses around the world suddenly closed in response to the COVID-19 pandemic. For some supervisors the rapid move to online supervision signalled a radical shift in their approach to working with PhD candidates, but for others it has been a smooth extension of their existing supervisory practices. By bringing together scholarly works and selected grey literature on remote supervision of doctoral writing, this paper explores how we might understand best practices for developing doctoral writing at a distance.

KEYWORDS:

• Online doctoral supervision
• research writing online
• doctoral writing
• remote supervision

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).

Notes

1. HDR (Higher Degree by Research) is an Australian term for research students enrolled in doctoral and Masters degrees.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Cally Guerin

Cally Guerin is a researcher developer at the Australian National University, working with PhD candidates and their supervisors to establish best practice in research education. She has been teaching, researching and publishing in doctoral education since 2008. Together with Claire Aitchison and Susan Carter, she edits the DoctoralWriting blog.

Claire Aitchison

Claire Aitchison is an academic developer at the University of South Australia where she provides professional development opportunities for teaching academics with whom she works to deliver quality online courses and programs. Claire has been publishing in the sector, and researching and supporting doctoral educators for over 20 years.