Effective Practices Podcasts, Blogs and Videos

Explore the collection of podcasts, blogs and short videos where experienced faculty and graduate supervisors from around the world share their insights for effective supervision.

Blogs

• Visit The Auditorium by the Research Culture & Researcher Development Team, within Research Services, at the University of Glasgow. They created the blog to share the ideas and influences on their learning designs openly. They offer insight into their educational practice, how they decide what to work on, and who to work with. They also use the blog to offer opinions, guidance, ideas, tools, and resources related to researcher education and development.

• Visit The Hidden Curriculum in Doctoral Education. The blog is written by Dr. Dely Lazarte Elliot, Dr. Kay Guccione, Dr. Søren S.E. Bengtsen and Dr. Sofie Kobayashi, a team of higher education academics, academic developers, psychologists and philosophers with years of experience in designing and delivering doctoral education and researcher development activities. They explore the hidden curriculum of doctoral education to help researchers tap into everyday learning opportunities.

• Visit Patter by Pat Thomson, an academic writing and research education blog that is international and has reached over 6 million people. Pat began to blog because she knows that not everyone can afford the books and she now has well over a thousand blog posts each of over a thousand words.

• Visit The Supervision Blog by Dr. Michele Jacobsen. This is a Canadian blog about research on quality graduate supervision and topics and issues in graduate education. Read SuperVisible Encounters with Great Graduate Supervision, a series highlighting effective mentorship through the fifth SoTL principle: “good SoTL practice involves ‘going public’” (Felten, 2013, p. 123). The series showcases award-winning supervisors' innovative practices as shared resources across disciplines.

• Visit Supervising PhDs blog by Dr. Kay Guccione, Head of Research Culture and Researcher Development at the University of Glasgow, and Co-Director of the Lab for Academic Culture. The blog is designed to share research outcomes and practical perspectives on PhD supervision in a way that supervisors can use to develop their practice.

Podcasts

• Listen to A Healthy Psychological Environment for Grad Students and their Supervisors. In this episode, communication consultant Lynn Kirkland talks about how to optimize communication between the supervisor and the learner and cultivate a sense of safety. From the FGSR Podcasts on Graduate Student Supervision from the University of Alberta.

• Listen to Effectively Teaching Learners with ADHD on Designed for Learning hosted by Jim Lang, a professor of the practice in Notre Dame Learning’s Kaneb Center for Teaching Excellence. Jim talks with Karen Costa about her new book An Educator’s Guide to ADHD: Designing and Teaching for Student Success. Karen shares strategies for supporting these students and taking advantage of the valuable strengths and perspectives they can bring to the classroom.

• Listen to The Mental Health Games We Play. In this episode, Associate Dean Janice Causgrove Dunn talks about the importance of communication and how effective communication can affect the mental wellbeing of students. From the FGSR Podcasts on Graduate Student Supervision from the University of Alberta.

• Listen to Solution-Focused Graduate Supervision with Dr. Yukari Seko and Asmaa Malik with the Centre for Excellence in Learning and Teaching at TMU. Together with seven other graduate supervisors they have been exploring supervisory strategies that meet the needs and academic development of today’s graduate students. 

• Listen to The Science of Mentorship podcasts, a 10-part series from The National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. Hear the personal mentorship stories of STEMM leaders like physicist Dr. Jim Gates, astronaut Dr. Ellen Ochoa, and groundbreaking physician Dr. Vivian Pinn who share their experiences with mentorship and highlight evidence-based mentorship skills to maximize STEMM students’ potential. 

• Listen to Treasure Island Pedagogies from the Centre for Innovation at the University of Liverpool. In episode 42, Tunde Varga-Atkins, Doug Cleaver, Hala Mansour, Saneeya Qureshi discussed supporting doctoral journeys as supervisors including themes of agency and the transformative power of students taking ownership of their own development,  holistic and student-centred approaches; the importance of the pedagogy of care and creating inclusive communities for doctoral education.  

• Listen to Under Pressure: Mental Health and the Academic Life. Almost two thirds of Canadian academics experience mental health issues during their career. What is behind this? The podcast explores the multiple pressures faced by today’s academic - including the often complex student-supervisor relationship.

• Listen to Dr. Victoria Verlezza on All Inclusive. Dr. Verlezza discusses why most leaders are getting feedback wrong and how vague or biased feedback damages retention, engagement, and performance. She shares practical strategies for giving feedback that fuels growth, supporting neurodivergent people, and building cultures rooted in psychological safety and accountability.

Videos