Coaching Skills for Supervising Bachelor and Master Theses

Aims

Supervision of students is a crucial part of academic teaching and a good opportunity to gain first teaching experience. Coaching skills can help make a difference in the students’ experience, motivation and the quality of the thesis. Especially solution-focused coaching focuses on increasing the student’s self-responsibility, learning-efficacy as well as fostering a trusting environment, which makes work more enjoyable and effective for both supervisor and student. In this course, participants get introduced to the solution-focused approach and how to balance it with other supervision requirements such as giving clear objectives and direction.

Participants who complete the course will
• know and experience the process of solution-focused coaching
• understand the value of resource-focus and psychological safety in thesis supervision
• harness individual supervising skills and start to develop a personal style of supervision
• develop skills to giving useful feedback and constructively deal with challenges

Content

Day 1 Intro to Coaching

Establishing Connection
Solution focused dialogue
Practical applications
Theoretical context

Day 2 Coaching and Supervision

Expert – Coach Spectrum
Challenging situations
Case discussion
Future development steps

Methods

The methods are based on the basic principles of solution-focused coaching (de Shazer, Berg, and others), systemic thinking (Sparrer, Varga and others) and nonviolent communication (Rosenberg). After short introductions, we train coaching skills using participative exercises in groups with short recap sessions. In this way, participants experience the usefulness of solution focused coaching questions from the perspective of a coach and a coachee. On day two we tap into the more specific practice of supervising students, with skills such as self-management, feedback-giving and conflict management.

Target Group

All Doctoral Candidates & Postdocs

About the Trainer

Oliver works both in academia and private institutions as a coach, trainer and lecturer. He holds a doctorate in cognitive psychology from the University of Basel and the Max Planck Institute for Human Development in Berlin. Oliver has worked as teacher and trainer in various sectors in industry, academia, and public services. Oliver was a postdoctoral Researcher at the University of Basel and the ETH Zürich and is working as a consultant, coach and trainer in private practice and is Lecturer at the University of Basel. Oliver combines his experience as coach and teacher with his background in cognitive psychology to provide a wide set of skills for supervising, coaching and mentoring students in different fields and settings.

Workload

Total of 20h (preliminary work 2h, course attendance 16h, follow-up group work and recap 2h)

Feature

Once registration is open, applications will be collected for 24 hours and course places allocated by lot. All registrations received after the initial 24h period will be put on a waiting list and assigned on a first come, first served basis.

Course places/places on the waiting list will be confirmed by e-mail. Course registrations can only be canceled before the registration period ends (send an e-mail to grace@unibas.ch). Full course attendance is mandatory. Participants who fail to attend a course without prior notification or withdraw after the registration deadline are subject to a fee of CHF 30. In addition, participants who cancel their course registration at a later point in time, are absent without an excuse or do not attend the entire course will, for reasons of fairness, not be considered for course registration in the following semester and will be removed from other courses offered in the same semester. Please find the detailed regulations on the Transferable Skills Homepage.