On October 18th, 2021, an online structured course entitled ‘How Improving Good Student-Supervisor Relationship Can Help Your PhD Journey’ was organized to share some tips on how to preserve a good connection with supervisor and its impact on the postgraduate journey. The structured course started at 9.00 am and ended at 10.30 am using Cisco Webex online conferencing platform. This course was organized by the Postgraduate Student Society School of Computing (PGSS-SC), with Asraful Syifaa’ Ahmad as the moderator.
This session was successfully held with the PGSS-SC committee’s help Muhammad Zafran Muhammad Zaly Shah, Muhamad Farhin bin Harun, and Muhammad Luqman Mohd Shafie. The honored speaker for the course is Prof. Ts. Dr. Wan Mohd Nasir Wan Kadir, Chair of School of Computing, Faculty of Engineering, UTM JB. As an academic staff in UTM for over 20 years, the speaker has vast experience supervising postgraduate students with different backgrounds and nationalities. His sharing will be impactful in helping students understand more their supervisor and vice-versa. Also, as one of the important figures at the faculty, administration level, balancing those works with supervising is challenging.
This course received 185 online registrations, and 111 participants turned up for the event. There are 68.47% PhD students, 18.01 % Master degree students, 1.08% Bachelor students, and the rest are unidentified. We also received participation from UTM staff. Additionally, xx.xx % are from UTM, and the rest is non-UTM.
The course starts by introducing and summarizing some background of the speaker. PhD is a journey, not a destination. There are some tips shared by the speaker to improve PhD journey, which highlighted on communication, planning, self- discipline, resourcefulness, and work-life balance. For communication, the student must know their supervisor and the supervisor’s role in the student’s life. As the supervisor is also part of the academic staff, the student must understand that their supervisor has other responsibilities. Hence, communication is a vital factor in planning a supervision session (meeting, progress report, and writing review). Communication must be done regularly, whether it is a formal or informal meetup. Communication must be clear and concise, using an appropriate tone to convey the information. To improve the relationship of student-supervisor communication, it always is beneficial, to be honest. To quote from a book from ‘7 Effective Habit of Successful People’ by Stephen Covey, be proactive. The speaker highlights that we need to understand the circle of influence and control what we can control. As we still practice social distancing, Communication is important so that an effective work schedule can be appropriately arranged between student and supervisor. Finally, as a reminder PhD journey is long, but you need other people to aim for the destination, which is to obtain PhD scroll.
Before closing the course, a QnA session is conducted where participants drop their questions and the moderator’s voice out of the speaker to give out the answer. Most questions about how to communicate better with the supervisor to ensure the student PhD journey is on track. Before closing the session, a photo session is conducted by our committee with the speaker and all participants. The session is allocated for two hours similar with previous structure courses, but as the speaker need to attend other matter, the session is cut short to one and a half-hour. Nevertheless, based on participant feedback, the duration is perfect and full of valuable content. The participants appreciate all the efforts by the SPS UTM and PGSS SC as the organizers. Additionally, 108 participants rated this structured course 4 and 5 stars in terms of the overall rating. This course outcome is a kick start for PGSS SC to organize more workshops like this.
