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Planning and feedback tools for structuring supervision

Faculty: Health. Programme: Department of Molecular. Medicine (Department of Clinical Medicine). Course: Master’s thesis and laboratory supervision. Study level: MSc. Size of class: Approximate number of students

Motivation for the activity and required outcome

Supervision of the Master’s thesis process was often seen to be unstructured and ineffective and characterised by a low abstraction level in the student. A wish was expressed to ensure that supervision meetings were well-structured, so as to improve the planning and feedback. Moreover, there was a wish to achieve a more scientific mindset and reflection in the students, and to develop and raise the cognitive abstract learning level, including a scientific empirical mindset.

Description of the activity – How and why

The tools SciPlanner and Padlet were used to structure the supervision and make it more effective, thus improving the students’ possibility to document their work.

  • The tools provided the supervisor and the student with an opportunity to work on the same platform, which enabled the supervisor to monitor the workflow during the process.    
  • The tools enabled the supervisor and the student to work together to set up some pre-defined frameworks and criteria for the scientific project or the individual experiment in the laboratory.    
  • Based on this, the students could currently document their scientific work and achieve a scientific mindset, which might prepare the ground for supervision.    

Worth considering

  • Using a planning tool prepares the ground for better planning, communication, collaboration and feedback between the supervisor and the student.    
  • The planning tools compel the students to document, reflect on, evaluate and provide a perspective on their scientific work, which supports the development of their scientific empirical mindset.    
  • The documentation of their work and their deeper reflection help facilitate the process of writing their Master’s thesis.