Getting it Right from the Start: Setting Up and Managing Good Supervisory Practices with Undergraduate Dissertations

For an undergraduate student, a dissertation is a very large piece of work requiring careful planning, time management, critical thinking, conceptual work, and adherence to practices for completion. For the supervisor, it offers the opportunity to work with a beginning researcher to help them to develop sound research practices, stretch them and find their own voice. All of this needs to be managed carefully and pragmatically in a very short span of time – often less than a year, sometimes only a semester. This chapter engages with and offers research and experience based ideas for good practice in supervising undergraduate dissertations and projects, although many of the ideas and practices are also transferable to postgraduate supervision.

Keywords: Critical thinking, ground rules, learning contract, learning, managing expectations, research question, time management, trajectory, undergraduate dissertation, working relationships.