Expectations of Research Students About Online Supervision of Thesis Supervisors: A Case of Virtual University of Pakistan

Abstract

The study aims to explore postgraduate research students expectations from their thesis supervisors in online postgraduate programs. Particularly it aimed to study their perceptions of the role of thesis supervisor in their postgraduate research work. The study followed survey research design. The population comprised 1118 Postgraduate (MS) students enrolled in nine programs at post-graduation level in spring 2018. Using stratified random sampling technique, a total of 150 postgraduate research students were selected from five programs (MS Computer science, M Phil Educational Leadership and Management, MS Business Administration, MS Mathematics and MS Zoology of four faculties of Virtual University of Pakistan. Data were collected through researcher made scale Expectations of Research Students (ERS) having five subscales and 28 items. Mean, Standard Deviation and ANOVA were applied for obtaining results. Findings suggested that well documented and communicated thesis supervision regulations and including face-to-face interactions with online supervision could make some improvements to the outcomes of online supervision.