Meeting the student

I met my MSc student at 8 a.m. in my co-supervisor's office. The student works at an IT consulting shop that does systems integration (CRM, POS, e-commerce, etc.) for (B|C)2(B|C) clients using the local region's incarnations of various parts of the stack.

I learned some more details about the MSc program from my co-supervisor. After approximately a year of study (which may start before the BSc is complete), students are allocated approximately four calendar months to dedicate to thesis writing. The institution offers no central support for writing or communications skills development. Students are expected to complete a ±50 page thesis that may arrive as chapters, or at once, for comments. My co-supervisor's approach is to do a lot of hand-holding (the kind that I would expect for a student's first undergraduate research paper). That's probably appropriate given the technical orientation of most of the students in this faculty.

I insisted on a timeline since the student expects to defend in December, and will see something that looks like a research plan on Monday. (The student is completing the last of his course requirements, and it is at this stage that supervisors are formally assigned.) I was surprised that the opponent ([external?] examiner) would only be given a week to review the completed thesis.

On evaluation of the thesis, we are to use a standard faculty grading template, which other departments within the same faculty may or may not use as their standard. I'm told that it's a very subjective template, and that some unwritten customs guide its use. Instead of the "outstanding essay" checkbox, the form has a column in which a rating of "5 - excellent" may be assigned to any component of the work. (At the low end is a check-box of "1 - sufficient".) The student expects to achieve an overall rating of 3 (for which there is no adjective), which is also the mode for MSc work. The student's main purpose for pursuing an MSc is for career advancement within his current company. He seems to get that there's more to information systems than just the technical components; a good sign. I will encourage the student to strive for a broader perspective than that, but I don't know how well the practical outcomes will stick, given the many competing demands and contingencies.

As just a PhD student, there are certain categories in which I sensibly could not assign a rating of 5 (e.g., "significance in discipline"), but I can assign a rating of 4 (supervisors who themselves hold only an MSc but are not pursuing a PhD may assign a maximum rating of 3. Only senior PhDs may give a rating of 5.

We are to help the student develop his research question based on his current work in industry in the upcoming weeks. The department places a high value empirical data in MSc work, to the point where some students mistakenly simply supply an entire thesis of data with no analysis.

Overall, the MSc here appears to combine the timeline of an honours BA or BSc with the empirical research and broader scientific impacts of an MA or MSc (or more).

After the meeting, I discussed with my co-supervisor some of the things I had learned from the meeting. I had mentioned that at Canadian universities, some academic unit had the function of an "effective writing centre" which was to ensure that students could communicate academically. My co-supervisor didn't know what to make of the concept, and couldn't identify one in any of the institutions in which she had been educated.