02 October 2009, 22:47

Hi I am currently researching the effectiveness Social Media as a tool for Online supervision of (PhD) Research Students. My question is can Mahara support  Online supervision of (PhD) Research Students?Does anybody has any involvement in this area...any previous experience?

I know there some issues with Mahara and assessment..but...I would be happy to hear more from you....

Cheers :)

04 October 2009, 18:37

Hi - it's not exactly the kind of feature you'll find "built in" to any software, it's probably more about how you use the tools given to you 

I could imagine that creating a group for the student and using that to co-ordinate their activity would be a reasonable way to go about it (nobody said that a group couldn't be about one person!). I know that GLISI are using Mahara's groups in this way, to develop school "leadership candidates" (I think this is principals in training). They have a group each, and the other members of the group are people like their tutor, sponsor, a university representative etc.

04 October 2009, 21:43

Hi Nigel!

Thanks for the insight ;)

Actually I though a good idea since Mahara can be integrated in Moodle and there is Thesis completion Tool plugin for Moodle  there could be a kind of connection since Mahara does not support assesment.

Any ideas or maybe more elaboration on what Nigel mentioned is welcome!

Any previous experience?

Cheers :) 

05 October 2009, 0:03

Hi Vasileios,

Well earlier this year I offered Mahara to my graduate students in a course based masters but they didn't really take it up.

I am however, very interested in what you are looking into. Our faculty runs a 3 path masters program, thesis, project and course based. I could see something like Mahara being very useful. I didn't know there was a moodle plug that could help you complete a thesis/research.

I have only Master's students at the moment but Phd's will cross my path soon enough. I am interested in this topic and would like to be kept up on what you find and what you have implemented.

Are you intending it for a large number of Phd students or just your own, which I would take not to be more than several at a time??

Anyway I am interested in this topic.

regards

tim 

05 October 2009, 11:37

Hi Tim,

I was and I am currently working also with Master  (and graduate) students though not  with Moodle but rather with in-house VLE. I will have to agree with you usually Master (and graduate) see the e-tools as an extra effort, though I believe that they will be able to benefit a possible collaboration (knoledge base) hub that will introduce the to the process of writing their thesis. It would be interesting to somehow make a hub of such cases on the subject. In case you have any literature on all levels ( Undergraduate, Master or PhD) I invite you to share it here with us.

Now regarding the Online PhD supervision the intention is to work with conderable small group of student 15-20 from different level. We are currently working on this with Moodle and in the plan to adopt Mahara so I am quite interested to see how it will work.

If you have any thoughs or ideas feel free to share.

Regards,

~Vasilis

05 October 2009, 3:33

Hi Vaselious,

Nigel is right, what really matters is how you use your tool. I'm currently a PhD student at Massey University, NZ. As my main research questions are in the area of ePortfolios, I decided to do kind of tracking of my progress using Mahara. I use it in various ways: as a file repository to share documents with my supervisors; as a journal for some reflective thoughts and recording meeting minutes; as a presentation tool for showing my progress. Actually I think that I use it not as much as I wanted, but anyway it is very helpful for my research project. And my supervisors find it quite convenient too. I can't say anything about assesment, but Mahara is really great to support the research process itself.

05 October 2009, 11:47

Hi Iulia

 I have a good frend at Massey University working the as e-Learning Lecturer Dr. Vlachopoulos maybe you know him :) 

Thank you for sharing your experience, I am happy to hear more on the used of mahara for research project, that is actually my research interest.

 Just a question when you used Mahara as a file repository to share documents with your supervisors, supervisor were you able to expect, see any feadback even in a form of comment?

What you are describing seems really interesting, it would nice to see it if you have some link to provided it would really great!

Looking forward to your further info.

Cheers!

~Vasilis

07 October 2009, 16:28

Hi!

Sorry for late response. I'm in Australia for two week and have some troubles with Internet connection.

Unfortunately right now I have no public views to show it to you. As soon as get back to NZ I will provide you with link to have a look at what I have. I think that Mahara can be extremely helpful especially for extramural students who have no chance to see their supervisors often. In my case, I don't expect too much feedback from my supervisors as we have our meetings every week. But it helps them to see what I'm doing right now, in what direction I'm working which can be later discussed.

Hope that helps.

Julia

08 October 2009, 7:51

Thank you Julia! I am looking forward!!

I think it will be really interesting to see the link and how you handle Mahara, since I am mainly targeting distance learning stundents  ;)

Cheers,

~Vasilis

15 January 2010, 8:26

Happy New Year to everyone !!! :)

How is going Julia?  I did not had any new from you at all since your last post in the forum.

I have done some work on the case and come up with some conceptual design....in case you are interested feel free to conatact me ;)

This applies to all interested people in the area!

:)