Purpose - The purpose of this paper is to devise methodologies and attain results that would allow the author to evaluate local collections that support public health users.Design methodology ...approach - The largest available source of data was local Masters' student theses. The methodology is a case study employing citation analysis of Masters' theses.Findings - The study provided a list of the journals most used by Masters' students in their theses to be compared to currently subscribed titles to evaluate local holdings. It confirmed that ISI journal rankings were not a useful tool for local collection building.Originality value - The study provides a methodology for evaluating and improving the local journal collection and could be combined with further studies to create a core list of public health journals locally. It also provides guidance on types of resources to buy and confirmed the importance of journals to the collection. The study could be combined with similar studies at other institutions to create a broad-based core journal list.
Student engagement has attracted much research attention in higher education because of various potential benefits associated with improved engagement. Despite extensive research on student ...engagement in higher education, little has been written about graduate students’ engagement with supervisory feedback. This paper reports on a study on student engagement with supervisory feedback on master’s theses conducted in the context of Nepalese higher education. The study employed an exploratory sequential mixed-methods design that drew on interviews and a questionnaire-based survey involving supervisors and students from four disciplines at a comprehensive university in Nepal. Analyses of the qualitative and quantitative data revealed significant differences between supervisors’ and students’ perceptions of all types (i.e., affective, cognitive, and behavioral) of student engagement. Significant disciplinary variations were also observed in supervisors’ and students’ perceptions of negative affect, cognitive engagement, and behavioral engagement. Furthermore, disciplinary background and feedback role interacted to shape perceptions of student engagement. These findings have implications for improving student engagement with supervisory feedback.
•102 master’s supervisors and 462 master’s students participated in this study.•We examined their perceptions of student engagement with supervisory feedback.•Students rated their feedback engagement markedly higher than supervisors did.•There were also significant variations in perceptions of engagement across disciplines.•Disciplinary background and feedback role jointly shaped the participants’ perceptions.
We examined the reliability of grading master's theses at a New Zealand university, where a variant of the academic journal review system is employed. The overall correlation between the grades ...recommended by internal and external markers of master's theses in psychology and applied psychology at this university was 0.39, which is similar to that produced between reviewers of submissions to academic journals. We conclude that thesis grading is about as reliable as the determination of the merit of journal submissions, which is usually regarded as rather poor. Applying a more objective rubric to thesis marking might raise the reliability, but such a change might also lower the creative and unique nature of theses, and hence reduce the contribution that an individual thesis can make to its particular discipline.
This paper provides insights into thesis supervisors' perceptions of the supervisory relationship and process in English-medium international master's degree programmes (IMDPs). It contributes to the ...field of supervisory pedagogy in a master's level education by examining how supervisors perceive their supervisory practices and what they consider to be the most important features for successful supervision. Twenty semi-structured interviews were conducted with thesis supervisors employed in five different Finnish universities. Qualitative content analysis was conducted. The results revealed that most of the interviewees perceive supervision as an asymmetric relationship in the context of a teaching model similar to Dysthe's (
2002
). Trust, topic selection, supervisors' support and the initial stage of supervision were regarded as the most important features during supervision. The article concludes with the recommendation that supervisors should have more opportunities to reflect on their supervisory practices.
•A theory or perspective help students unravel discoveries.•Theories and perspectives are consolidations to explain or understand a phenomenon.•In diversified research fields multiple theories and ...perspectives is a strength.•Theorizing requires a basic familiarity with different theories and perspectives.
The present paper is a reply to Brunsson (2021b), who wrote a commentary on the edited volume Theories and Perspectives in Business Administration (Eriksson-Zetterquist, Hansson & Nilsson, 2020). Although we agree with Brunsson on several points, we nevertheless argue that students need to learn about different theories and perspectives. First, the use of theories and perspectives as analytical tools will help students to describe and analyze a certain phenomenon. Second, to be able to theorize students need to acquire fundamental knowledge of the background and the specificities of the theory or perspective in use. Third, an awareness of the diversity of theories and perspectives that exists within the business administration discipline is a prerequisite to being able to contribute to the creation of new knowledge. Finally, we do not agree with Brunsson that the multitude of theories and perspectives in the business administration discipline is a sign of “an inferiority complex”. It is the outcome of the vitality and viability of the discipline.
