Department Responsibilities on Supervision: Postgraduate Students' Perception at One of Malaysian Public University

Abstract

The responsibility of the department is important and very closely related to those of the supervisors and students in relation to completion of the postgraduate studies. The objective of this research is to identify the responsibilities of department from the postgraduate students' perception regarding supervision; to identify the respondents need and what have they actually received from their department. There were 67 respondents involved in the survey. The survey data have been analysed using SPSS in order to obtained descriptive statistics. Six postgraduate students from various fields of study and year were also interviewed to answer the research questions. The interviews have been analysed manually. Generally, among the responsibilities of the department are inclusive of providing resources, support and facilities for postgraduate research students. However, the results revealed that students have put more emphasised on the facilities provided by their department as compared to others. The results have successfully explored the experiences of the respondents and their perception towards the responsibilities of the department for supervision.