2025

Ojasalo, Jukka

This paper describes experiences and observations dealing with group supervision of master’s students writing their theses. It reports advantages as well as challenges and solutions related to group supervision. It is based on the authors’ twenty years of experience in group supervision. The observations deal with master’s students who are studying alongside a full-time job. Group supervision refers to a supervision approach where several students working on different research projects are supervised at the same time by a supervisor [1]. Group supervision is a structured process where students receive guidance and support from both supervisors and peers. Activities typically include shared learning, problem-solving, idea generation, and emotional support. Students discuss research challenges, offer feedback, and share academic resources. The supervisor provides instructions, facilitates group dynamics, and encourages peer learning [2]. The literature review of this article shows several advantages of group supervision. They include increased probability and time to thesis completion, feedback from multiple perspectives by peers, learning the culture of the research community, facilitated inclusion of international students, time-saving in supervision, empathetic and trustful relationships, as well as enhanced support and reduced isolation. Challenges and problems of group supervision are also reported in the literature. They include balancing the instructor’s dual role as supervisor and expert, facilitating equal participation within heterogeneous student groups, identifying and developing the students’ analytical skills, problems between students, problems with supervisors, supervisees’ anxiety, logistical constraints, and poor group time management. The experiences and observations reported in this article deal with advantages as well as challenges and their solutions related to group supervision of master’s students writing their theses. The advantages include learning from others’ problems and solutions, peer counselling and reflection, increased selfconfidence, and eliminating feelings of isolation. The challenges and their solutions relate to students’ schedules, time management in group supervision sessions, inadequate preparation for group supervision, and the fact that group supervision does not replace individual supervision. This article first makes a literature review on group supervision. It shows the findings from the literature dealing with nature and characteristics of group supervision, its advantages and challenges. After that, it describes the experiences and observations on advantages as well as challenges and their solutions related to group supervision of master’s students writing their theses. Then, it draws the final conclusions.