3  Getting Set up for the Year Ahead

It can be useful to set up a few things in advance of starting supervision, as it can help make the process of group supervision smoother and more efficient. It also means that students will know where to access information, and better understand what they can expect during supervision (and what is expected of them).

3.1 Transparency and communication

In our supervision, we’ve found that it can be particularly helpful to be transparent with students about why we include certain tasks as part of supervision (e.g. peer review, practice talks). You’ll see that for each of our examples of group supervision sessions in Chapter 5, we provide a rationale to share with students for this reason. This transparency also applies to getting set up for the year, so that students know in advance what they can expect during the process of conducting their dissertation.

This can be beneficial in multiple ways:

  • Setting expectations and being clear about what supervision will look like can be particularly helpful for students experiencing anxiety or those who are neurodivergent. Being clear and upfront in advance, without students asking for it, can help students know what to expect
  • Being transparent and open can help to establish trust as part of the supervisory relationship, which can make students more likely to open up if they are experiencing difficulties
  • Communicating expectations can help promote accountability and support students to track their progress over a longer piece of work

As well as being transparent about what supervision entails, we find it is also important to be open about times that we have experienced challenges. For example, we both tell students about times that we have found something difficult, or ways in which we struggled as students, in an effort to normalise the experience of writing a dissertation (which can be daunting!).

3.2 Practical resources

To support our supervision, we’ve developed some practical resources that are linked below. Please feel free to adapt any of these and use them however might be useful for you.

3.2.1 Setting expectations document

The purpose of the ‘setting expectations’ document is to explicitly detail the supervision process for both students. They have been well-received, but the students (so far!) who seem to find it most useful are a) international students and b) neurodivergent students.

This document gives students an overview of:

  • expectations (both of students and of the supervisor)
  • structure and topics covered in supervision sessions
  • setting deadlines and how these will be managed
  • how we will communicate (e.g. teams/email)
  • feedback
    • when feedback can be expected
    • what feedback will look like
    • how to ask for specific feedback
  • peer review
  • future aspirations

It can be presented in whichever format works best for you. The full document is Appendix A of Structured Sessions in Group Supervision. That book also provides PDF versions of the document for final year undergraduate and online distance learning postgraduate students, in the ‘Setting expectations with students’ section of its Overview page.

3.2.2 Shared file structure (e.g. on Teams/OneDrive)

As part of getting set up for the year, it is helpful to create a shared file structure - for example on Teams or OneDrive - where you and your students can share resources, drafts and feedback. How this is organised, and who can see what, will depend on your students and on your supervision style. Below we describe two approaches, one from each of us. They differ in how the folders are organised (by task or by student) and in who has access to what.

Open structure, organised by task (Holly)

Holly organises folders by task, with a subfolder for each student. For example:

  1. Proposals & Ethics
  1. Student A
  2. Student B
  3. Student C
  4. Student D
  1. Introductions
  1. Student A
  2. Student B
  3. Student C
  4. Student D

… and so on.

Linking to the ideas of openness and transparency noted above, Holly tends to grant access to all folders for all students in her group. This is useful to facilitate activities like peer review, feedback and discussion. For example, after each student reviews a peer’s Introduction draft, they then lead a feedback discussion with input from Holly, which opens into a broader discussion with the whole group. Let’s say a peer reviewer has noted that the logical flow between paragraphs could be smoother in places: we discuss how to achieve this and then Holly can point to a student’s work which did this effectively, and ask if they are happy for their peer to have a look.

Holly’s students have fed back that this is helpful and motivating to see how the group are progressing and to get peer support like this. However, it is important to be mindful of cases where this completely open file structure may be less helpful for certain students. For example, if one student has faced significant delays or challenging circumstances, you may judge that it is better to create private folders for each student to avoid unhelpful and demotivating social comparisons.

Individual linked folders, organised by student (Ashley)

Ashley’s approach is closer to the private-folder option described above. She creates one folder per student on her university OneDrive and shares it individually with that student’s university account, so only they can open it. Each folder contains the same five subfolders, and students can add their own. Items that students choose to share with the group sit separately, in the Teams channel:

[Student's individual folder]     OneDrive: private to student and supervisor
|-- Proposal
|-- Ethics
|-- Data
|-- Analysis
|-- Dissertation Drafts
`-- (additional folders added by the student)

[Teams channel]                   Teams SharePoint site: shared with the whole group
`-- Items students choose to share

Students use their folder for the work they want feedback on, and keep their data and analysis files there throughout, so that Ashley has access to everything related to the dissertation. Other versions of their work can be kept elsewhere. Students are asked to upload to the folder themselves. If something is sent another way or forgotten, Ashley adds a copy to the folder when she receives it, so that the folder is always a complete record. The folders do not send alerts, so students message Ashley on Teams when something has been added. Feedback is returned as in-text comments with a short global summary, and the order in which drafts are reviewed is tracked in the joint deadlines document.

Each folder has an expiry date set around graduation. At that point the student loses access, but nothing is deleted and Ashley retains it.

Ashley introduced individual folders for two reasons. First, some students feel their work must be polished before anyone else sees it, and a private folder means a draft can reach the supervisor at whatever stage it is in, which is intended to lower the barrier to sharing work in progress. Second, the supervisor needs access to everything related to the dissertation, including data, without relying on students to send it. This approach is new for 2026-27 and has not yet been evaluated.

Sharing with the wider group is selective and builds over the year. Students are encouraged to start with low-stakes items such as bullet-point introductions, move on to summaries of their analyses, and later share the slides for their final presentation They can also peer review each other’s Discussion sections if they wish. The student-facing description of this process is in Appendix A of Structured Sessions in Group Supervision.

Choosing between the two

The two approaches rest on different assumptions. An open structure assumes that seeing peers’ work is motivating and helps to normalise drafts that are still rough. Individual folders assume that, for some students, being visible to peers is a barrier, and that sharing selectively is an easier place to start.

The approach that a supervisor takes is likely to depend on the group: how well students know each other, how confident they are, and whether anyone is struggling with progress or circumstances.

3.2.3 Shared OneNote

Holly also links to a shared OneNote notebook from her group’s Teams channel. This creates a collaborative space where students can share notes on literature they find; outlines of e.g. their Introduction plan to discuss with the group; and a weekly progress log. This log invites students to keep a note each week of what they have been working on, what questions they have, and what their goal is for the coming week. This can help keep students focused and motivated, and also helps the supervisor to keep track of what multiple different students are working on.

3.2.4 Joint deadlines document

Ashley uses a deadline document for each cohort of supervisees. This details deadlines (these tend to be soft deadlines, but others might decide to do hard deadlines) and also notes when each draft was received and when feedback was returned.

It can help keep on top of a) where each student is in the process, b) the order in which sections are received, and c) allows students to know where their draft is in the ‘queue’. Students are able to view the spreadsheet but they are not able to edit it, meaning they can’t change a deadline without discussion.

Ashley finds it helps students to be accountable for when they plan to submit drafts. It also helps to reduce unrealistic expectations in terms of return times. It is important to be flexible and be clear with students that the aim is to support them, rather than to constrain them unnecessarily.

Examples of deadline documents: