Postgraduate supervision
This webpage explores strategies that support the postgraduate student learning journey. It is designed to link with the webpage of USQ's Office of Research and Higher Degrees and also to engage USQ staff with national and international good practice in research supervision.
Policy
USQ emphasises the fundamental importance of research and research training through its Research Guiding Objectives and implements these through the Policy on Research, Scholarship and Postgraduate Research Supervision
Online Resources
A range of online resources are available to assist staff in the supervision process:
The Library has resources for students on finding, retrieving and managing information.
fIRST
In 2008, USQ joined the fIRST consortium
fIRST provides access to a range of resources that help universities and individual supervisors improve the quality of their postgraduate research education. fIRST was created by a consortium of Australian and New Zealand universities. The aim of fIRST is to review and share existing supervision development resources and to develop new resources for the benefit of consortium members.
fIRST's resources include:
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on-line activities that individuals can use to develop their expertise as postgraduate research student supervisors
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materials and instructions for providing face-to-face staff development workshops
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tools, case studies, a bibliography and links to other relevant web sites.
To access the resources, staff need a username and password. Please contact your Faculty Research Office or the Office of Research & Higher Degrees to obtain the USQ username and password.
The ALTC project Building research supervision and training across Australian universities builds on the fIRST resources.
Three recent additions to the fIRST resources include:
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From topic to research question: offers two aids and an explanation of a systematic approach to analysing literature and reaching a clearly defined research question
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A tool to develop an agreement between a student and supervisor: provides supervisors with a template to draw up an outline of mutual expectations and commitments with their students.
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A template for developing a research overview and thesis outline: provides a supervisor and student a mechanism to develop and record the structure of a thesis as candidature progresses.
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