I've been teaching in higher education for over a quarter of a century (nothing like a short phrase to make you feel ancient!) and I've noticed a great irony about solo projects:
The majority of a student's individual traumas / stresses / challenges are common to all students.
Looking back over years of individual supervisions with project students, it slowly dawned on me that I was answering the same questions at the same sort of time to every student. Over a particular year, maybe 20 or 25% of the discussions were truly specific to that project. Everything else was just being repeated, because everyone needed to know it.
Things like:
- How do I choose my project?
- How do supervisions work?
- How do I write a literature survey?
- How do I plan my time most effectively?
- How best to plan my project?
- How do I overcome being stuck, tired, unmotivated, etc?
- How do I write a final report?
and the list goes on . . .
I thought it would be good for me (as a supervisor) and the students if I wrote down some of these common questions, then I could share them with the students, and they would see that they were not alone in struggling with these things.
Then it dawned on me that maybe most other supervisors around the world were doing the same thing, covering the same issues. Maybe most students in every subject area feel the same thing. That's when I decided to write the book.
In future blog posts I plan to discuss the contents, give tips for students (timed to the academic year, so you could follow these posts as a voice from someone else who's working with people doing final projects), and give other useful links, tips and discussions along the way.
For more details, take a look at the full book, available on the Amazon site below.
Managing Your Project: Achieving Success with Minimal Stress < NEW: Print Version >
Also available on Kindle: http://www.amazon.co.uk/dp/B0164RXKLI
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