Bungie Jumping and Supervision of Higher Degree Students

Abstract

This article reports on a project that involved research into higher degree supervision of students at an Australian university. Postgraduate supervision is an intensive, demanding and complex form of teaching yet it is not always done well. I seek to draw attention to the issues surrounding supervision by posing the question, 'What is the difference between bungie jumping and thesis supervision?' While there are some similarities, like for instance, in both cases the student jumps into the unknown, there are some major organisational differences. Bungie jumping classes are well organised, 'customers' are fully briefed and supervisors must receive significant training before they can conduct a session and everyone knows the intended outcome. Unfortunately this is not always the case in postgraduate supervision. In some instances students fear supervision sessions intensely and one might hazard a guess that bungie jumping might produce less anxiety. Thus it is not surprising that university administrators increasingly are becoming aware of the difficulties of providing students with effective supervision and have been trying to find ways to address the issues.