The transition from in-person to online supervision: Does the interaction between doctoral advisors and candidates change?

ABSTRACT

When the coronavirus pandemic hit, most doctoral supervision moved online around the globe. Virtual meetings using videoconferencing technology (VCT) suddenly replaced in person encounters raising the question of whether supervisory interaction has been altered due to changing delivery modes. This article applies a practice-theoretical approach to explore how doctoral advisors and candidates interact in the virtual space and how they experienced the transition to online supervision. Drawing on 11 recorded Zoom meetings and 35 interviews with doctoral advisors and candidates in the social sciences and physics, the study has found that field-specific supervision models fit VCT environments differently. The findings indicate that team-based supervision is more difficult to sustain online than one-on-one supervision where advisors and candidates change little in their usual interaction.

KEYWORDS:

• Online doctoral supervision
• virtual supervisory interaction
• videoconferencing technology
• computer-mediated interaction and communication

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank the participants of this study for providing me with invaluable insight into their supervision practice as well as Anne J. MacLachlan and two anonymous reviewers for their useful suggestions.

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation under Grant TO 1107/1-1.

Approval for human research was granted by HREC at the University of Sydney (2019/245) and CPHS/OPHS at the University of California, Berkeley (2020-02-13014).

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author.

Supplementary material

Supplemental data for this article can be accessed here

Notes

1. Non-verbal elements such as Zoom notifications, expressions, gestures or long breaks are described in brackets. Line numbers refer to the full transcripts of the selected interaction excerpts provided as supplementary material

Additional information

Funding

This work was supported by the German Research Foundation [TO 1107/1-1].

Notes on contributors

Marc Torka

Marc Torka is a sociologist of science, higher education and the professions at the Department of Sociology and Social Policy at the University of Sydney. He was Principal Investigator of the project ‘International comparison of doctoral training practices’ on which this article is based.