Effectiveness of human supervision: view under various aspects

Efficient supervision

I will now outline several facets that contribute to humanizing the supervision process and, in turn, boost graduation completion rates based on my observations in Côte d’Ivoire. Humanized supervision entails recognizing aspects tied to the social, economic, and human needs of students. Therefore, it is essential to strike a balance between exacting academic standards and the human dimension, encompassing both academic rigor and compassion.

The task of finding the right balance of interaction between the need for academic rigor in a student’s work and the human dimension in the student–supervisor relationship is a major responsibility of a supervisor. They must excercise good practices, such as the following:

The supervisor must be available, open, and reliable

Supervisors must create an environment in which students feel safe to ask anything that they worry about. Answering students’ e-mails in a timely manner and being available for regular meetings.

I remember my own PhD supervisor, who was available, responding quickly to any email, giving feedback, and inviting me to meetings when necessary, and this helped me complete my thesis.  Now I am adopting this attitude toward my master’s students.

Supervisor must be the confidant and contact person of the students

Supervisors must engage in some form of life coaching and give motivational talks when the opportunity arises in informal conversations. They must try to focus more on their daily concerns and activities, and on teaching the students skills as well as knowledge. Getting into non-academic discussions that touch on general issues of life enhances the emotional, spiritual, and general well-being of the students, which has a positive effect on their studies. Therefore, mutual trust is fundamental and critical in the context of student supervisor relationships (Khene, C. P. (2014), Daramola, O. (2021)).

Supervisor must be flexible and adaptable

During supervision, the supervisor must be ready to switch roles to being a facilitator, a director, and a critical friend, and to be responsive to the needs of the student as the occasion demands. Being flexible and adaptable could be beneficial to students rather than being rigid (Khene, C. P. (2014).

Supervisor must adopt a collaborative and interactive approach

Supervisors must promote social Integration in the research group. Encourage students to present their research and receive feedback from each other as well as other supervisors. (Khene, C. P. (2014).

This approach, adopted by two research units (one in mathematics¹ and one in computer science²) of the National Polytechnic Institute of Côte d’Ivoire, led them to have the highest PhD completion rate respectively in mathematics and computer science of all the higher educational institutions in the country for the last two years (2022 and 2023).

Conclusion

Adopting human supervision approaches as described above has led to success from what I have observed at three higher education institutions in Cote d’Ivoire in both Master’s and Doctorate programmes.

However, due to cultural and sociological environment, institutional regulatory and other factors, this kind of “humanized supervision” may not be as efficient everywhere as it has been in Côte d’Ivoire.

But for most West Africa higher education institutions sharing almost the same characteristics, we recommend the adoption of human supervision as a model.