01Allocation
Made against the working subject, in the first week, and reviewed once if the subject moves early.
How a supervisor is allocated, and when it is revisited
A supervisor is allocated during the first week of the cohort, against the working subject of the candidate’s independent project rather than against a rota.
Allocating against the subject is what allows the rest of the arrangement to hold: the reading a candidate is set and the questions a supervisor puts are pointed at one problem from the first meeting, and by the fourth week there is a working question rather than an area of interest. This is also why the intended subject is the item an application turns on most often.
Where a project moves substantially in the first four weeks, the allocation is reviewed once. The review is a real decision and not a formality; its outcome, whether the allocation changes or stands, is confirmed to the candidate in writing. After the fourth week the allocation is settled, because a supervisor who has read a candidate’s work from the beginning is worth more to that candidate than a closer match to the subject.
02The pattern
Meetings of one hour: fortnightly while the taught weeks run, monthly once they have closed.
1hour a meeting
The meeting pattern, before and after the taught weeks
Supervision is delivered as scheduled meetings of one hour with the allocated supervisor. They are held fortnightly while the twelve taught weeks run and monthly after they close, and they are scheduled rather than arranged as the need arises, so a candidate always knows when the next one is.
A written record of each meeting is placed on the candidate’s supervisory file. The record is short, and it exists so that the next meeting can begin where the last one finished rather than with a reconstruction of it.
03The record
Four things make up a supervisory file, and the candidate has seen all four of them already.
4parts to the file
What the supervisory record is made of
Supervision generates a record, and the record is held for the length of the academic records schedule because the conduct of a project is evidenced by it. Nothing goes into it that the candidate has not already been shown.
Part one The note of each meeting one per meeting
What was discussed, what was decided, and what the candidate is doing before the next meeting. Where a decision reverses an earlier one, the note says so rather than quietly replacing it.
Part two The milestones as they are reached four in sequence
Each milestone is recorded at the point it is reached, and the sequence is preserved even where the calendar moves. A suspension re-dates what is left from the point of return; it does not remove a milestone from the list.
Part three Drafts sent for comment as submitted
A supervisor reads and comments on one full draft and on one chapter-length extract in addition to it. Both are held as the candidate sent them, so that the comment returned can be read against the version it was written about.
Further reading of drafts is a matter for the supervisor to agree with the candidate, and where it is agreed it is recorded in the same place as everything else.
Part four Correspondence about the project held with the file
Correspondence between candidate and supervisor about the independent project forms part of the supervisory record and is held with it, because a decision taken by message counts for as much as one taken in a meeting.
Retention, and who is able to read the file, is set out in the candidate data statement
04The check
Where a project touches people, personal records or somebody else’s premises, the check comes before the evidence.
The governance and ethics check, and why it stops the work
Where a project involves human participants, personal records or fieldwork on a third party’s premises, a governance and ethics check is completed before any evidence is gathered. The project waits at that point, and it does not proceed to the evidence stage until the check is recorded as complete.
The check produces its own file, which sets out what the candidate proposed and what the company recorded as complete. That file is retained with the supervisory record, because the two answer the same question about how a piece of research was conducted, and a question of that kind is asked long after the work itself has finished.
Taught before it is asked
Research ethics opens the third module, read against published governance guidance and one worked application, so the check is not the first time a candidate meets the subject.
Written before it is done
The proposal of the eighth week is where the need for a check first becomes visible, which is why the proposal is read as a plan that has to work.
A full draft is read by the supervisor in the closing stage, and the comment on that draft is the last formal comment a candidate receives before submission. What follows it belongs to the candidate: the revision, the final reading, and the decision that the work is finished.
The four milestones in order are on the front sheet