Supervisors’ Experiences in Supervising Postgraduate Education Students’ Dissertations and theses at the Zimbabwe open University (Zou)

Supervision of students’ dissertations and theses is by no means a small task for Open and Distance Education supervisors. Supervisors have diverse research backgrounds, expertise and experience (Pearce, 2005). Some supervisors appear to be more comfortable with the supervision of qualitative research, while others prefer supervising quantitative research instead. Apart from the methodological inclinations of supervisors, ODL research supervision faces challenges that are slightly different from those experienced by supervisors in conventional universities. Most of the challenges in ODL revolve around the distance between the student and the supervisor and problems related to ICT accessibility and affordability, low adoption rate of technology, unreliable postal services, inter alia. It is hoped that the conduct of this study will generate worthwhile knowledge regarding moving towards relevant meanings in the provision of education through ODL. The study adopted a case study design complemented by document analysis. Twenty five ZOU lecturers (from the Faculty of Arts and Education) with experience in the supervision of postgraduate research were conveniently sampled and interviewed. Document analysis was limited to the report of Higher Degrees Supervisors’ Convocation of 2011, Reports on Higher Degrees Proposal Defense Sessions of 2010 and 2011 and Examiners’ Reports on PGDE and MEd research projects. Data were analysed using grounded theory. Supervisors were excited about seeing their students mature into independent and competent researchers, whose findings could extend the frontiers of knowledge. Time could be a limiting factor especially when dealing with struggling students. Supervisors’ experiences revealed that students were experiencing challenges in conducting research – most aspects of research were problematic, while other challenges were linked to students’ personalities – underestimating commitment and effort needed to produce a good research report, propensity to reproduce other scholars’ research reports and not consulting supervisors regularly. Some supervisors felt that failure to consult regularly could be a result of the transport costs involved and network connectivity problems especially for rural-based students. Regular research workshops and seminars, maintaining data bases of research conducted in the past in the University, encouraging students to take part in collaborative research with their supervisors, supervisors encouraged to have working knowledge of both research paradigms as well as research designs applicable to both research paradigms, supervisors to be actively involved in research were some of the recommendations.