The CPC Project

Welcome to the CPC supervision development course. This course brings together academics from five African and four European universities to collaboratively build our supervision capacity.

This course is aimed at building supervisory capacity across countries. The course content, methodologies and modes of delivery consider the diverse conditions in which supervisors work as well as the differences in the postgraduate process across disciplines and programmes.

The course has been developed quickly in response to the constraints imposed by the Coronavirus and so we ask for patience as we figure things out together!

The course has three major themes:

As supervisors, we all face challenges – our students are diverse in their personalities, abilities and backgrounds and many of us face the conflicting pressures of teaching, publishing and supervising. In this course, we have the opportunity to talk about how we can strengthen our supervision practices, and recognise the complexities of the circumstances in which we find ourselves.

• Talk about how we can go about creating inclusive and participatory learning environments that enable students to acquire and further develop their knowledge, methodological skills and writing practices during the research process.
• Share ideas about providing postgraduate candidates with a critical introduction to a ‘culture of research’ and to a research community.
• Consider how we can possess and use a breadth of methodologies related to our own discipline or field.
• Discuss giving constructive feedback on students’ products and processes.
• Consider how students acquire and develop information fluency.
• Call on a range of approaches to supervision including mentoring and coaching.
• Reflect individually and with others on our own supervisory practice.
• Discuss students’ expectations about the postgraduate process and the roles of both student and supervisor.
• Discuss the logistics of managing supervisionwithin institutional requirements.