Guidance for Supervisors

Information for Supervisors

Thank you for supervising Corpus students. We are very grateful to our supervisors for their efforts in this crucial aspect of Cambridge teaching and learning. So are our students, who are hugely appreciative of those who teach them. 

This page is intended to supplement the generic intercollegiate guidance and provide details that may be useful to you. Please do not hesitate to contact us if anything is unclear or if you have any further questions. The Tutorial Office staff and I will do our best to answer quickly and clearly. 

The page is divided for ease into five sections:

• Practical information and contacts.
• Our expectations around supervisions.
• Serious academic or pastoral concerns. 
• Supervision reports.
• Common questions - feel free to suggest additional ones.

We hope that this may be useful whether you are a new or an experienced supervisor. 

Marina Frasca-Spada 
Senior Tutor
September 2024

Practical information and contacts

People

The creation of a supervision report provides you with the name and CRSid of any given pupil’s Director of Studies (DoS) and Tutor. If in any doubt as to which DoS to contact, or if you need to be put in contact with a student’s Tutor, please email the Tutorial Office for further guidance. Details of the Tutorial Office staff can be found online. Please contact us if you have questions regarding the submission or processing of reports, queries about particular students you are supervising, what we expect in your subject, or other matters. 

Deadlines    

Please make every effort to submit your reports each term at least a week before the end of Full Term. See the relevant University webpages for term dates. That timing allows Directors of Studies and Tutors to discuss reports in end-of-term feedback meetings with students. Even if this means submitting a report before all supervisions have been conducted, that is not a problem — we’d rather have the report available anyway. Students appreciate this chance to discuss the feedback they receive from supervisors. The content can also help them and their DoS to plan for vacation study, revision or remedial effort. It is fine to submit a report stating that some supervisions are yet to be given (and perhaps add a further report later, not claiming any additional hours).  We also ask DoSs to approve supervision reports within a week of the end of Full Term. These arrangements allow payments to reach supervisors in the last week of December, March and June. We may run supplementary payments in late January, April and September if significant numbers of reports miss the earlier deadlines, but we cannot make ad hoc payments. 

Policies

Details of the College’s procedures and policies on such matters as safeguarding, support to study, discipline and other matters may be found online. These policy documents can supplement the general safeguarding guidance given to all supervisors but are not intended to impose any further requirements on you as a supervisor.

Supervising for Corpus: Our expectations

Our precise expectations about supervisions vary by Tripos, Tripos part and sometimes by individual student circumstances. Our core generic advice would be to facilitate student participation in supervisions and not to lecture them; to allow time for you to respond to students’ questions; and to respond to the particular needs of a given supervision group whilst not losing sight that the process is both an exploration of the subject and part of preparation for Tripos. 

We do not want either supervisors or students taking on more work than is necessary for the system to run smoothly and successfully. If in doubt, or if you have concerns that you may be running beyond such limits, please ask the relevant Director of Studies or the Senior Tutor for guidance. 

In most cases you should already have been briefed by a Director of Studies about students’ names, contact details, any Student Support Document guidance, the number and frequency of supervisions we anticipate should be given, and the volume and the level of work we will require of the students you teach. Please do not vary from these expectations without first checking with the Director of Studies. Where the relationship is mediated through a departmental role, you may also need to consult course convenors and administrators as well as the relevant Director of Studies on some matters. 

Serious academic, pastoral and welfare issues

If you have serious pastoral or academic concerns please alert the College promptly. We appreciate the role that our supervisors play in supporting students, but we do not expect them to take on the duties which Directors of Studies, Study Skills specialists, the College Nurse and the Tutors provide in managing serious academic or pastoral / wellbeing concerns. Please refer all such matters to us rather than seeking to deal with them yourself. 

Nor do we expect (let alone encourage) supervisors to accede if a student suggests that they wish to tell them something in total confidence, not for onward transmission to others. You may wish to report any such request informally to a member of our welfare team such as the Tutor or Senior Tutor. It is often a sign that a student needs additional support.  Supervisors are not expected to become pastoral advisors to students. Their role is an academic one. 

Supervision reports: What they are for and how we use them

Supervision reports should be thought of primarily as feeding back to the College (DoS and Tutor) on a student’s work during the term. They are, of course, also visible to the student and thus can be used to reinforce feedback that has been given in writing or in supervisions. Reports are discussed at end-of-term meetings and help us properly to support and advise students. It follows that we prefer third-person reporting – “they are doing well” – to reports addressed to the student – “well done, you are doing well.” Students are used to such a style as it is the most common format for school reports. 

The College values an effective assessment, even a brief one, of a student’s strengths and weaknesses; aptitude, attitude and progress; their work rate and their participation. Constructive, but clear reports are particularly useful when things go wrong for a student. All supervision reports must be submitted as part of any case made to the Examination Access and Mitigation Committee (EAMC, the University body that considers applications for allowances, intermissions, etc.). That body will inevitably see blank reports or those that are laconic in the extreme as unhelpful to a student’s case compared to one that speaks to effort, engagement and aptitude. 

A report is used in several ways:

• It informs DoS and Tutorial conversations with students regarding their attendance, commitment, participation, and achievements in supervisions. 
• It assists in steering students on how to work efficiently rather than too hard, too little or with the wrong focus.  
• It helps students to see an assessment of their work and locate their progress in the wider context of their whole course. 
• Where a student may be struggling personally or academically, reports provide invaluable detail. Discussions of capability to study are enhanced by reports that give an early clear and balanced account of how a student has been doing. The underconfident can be boosted, the overconfident given a timely reminder of the need to improve some aspect(s) of their studies. It assists in planning revision, consolidating work or honing study skills.
• It helps us to manage students’ expectations. Tutors and Directors of Studies may also feed in material based upon supervision reports when they write references. These are greatly enhanced by the ability to refer to supervisors’ views. References are sometimes requested years after graduation and being able to feed in material from reports is especially helpful when this occurs. Please note that supervisors are not required to provide personal or academic references for students. Occasionally a supervisor may well be happy to provide a reference, perhaps especially if it relates to dissertation work. That is fine and may be very much in the student’s interest. However, please do not feel obliged to do this and do feel free to liaise with the student’s DoS if approached. 

Multiple supervision reports from one supervisor are not necessarily better than single ones. Even if you use draft reports as an aide-memoire with detailed accounts of supervisions, please do not feel obliged to submit separate reports on every supervision. In many ways it is preferable to have a single report that summarises the student’s strengths and weaknesses and makes suggestions on how they can best consolidate and improve their work.

The heart of what we are looking for is as follows:

• An account of what has gone well and areas for improvement.
• Brief commentary on work rate and participation. Advice for the DoS and Tutor to pass on to the student.
• Comments looking forward to revision and preparing for the Tripos examinations.

If you feel there is a need to write at greater length, please email the Director of Studies and/or Tutor via the links provided on the report form. 

Common questions

Do I have to complete the fields on industry, progress, interest and estimate of work?

Yes, please. These are very important to Directors of Studies and Tutors and often are simply vital in the EAMC processes. In the last case, please give an honest assessment of the quality of the work actually done so far, rather than an optimistic evaluation of how well the student might possibly do if all goes as well as possible. If you feel you cannot give that last estimate, please explain why to the Director of Studies. 

Supervisors should establish clear expectation on this at the start of term, notably if their own commitments limit their flexibility to rearrange supervisions. Guidance to students on this topic stresses that attendance at supervisions and completing work for them is mandatory, not optional. We warn students that to miss supervisions without good cause and/or without reasonable advance notice to the supervisor and other students in their supervision group is not acceptable. Good cause would include illness, serious personal or family issues, Faculty commitments, for final-year students job or HE interviews, and such like. Extra-curricular activities would not usually be regarded as constituting just cause. Please tell us if a student does miss supervisions without good cause. It can be an important early indicator that we need to put extra support in place for them. 

What should I do if a student persistently misses supervisions or fails to hand in work? 

Please treat such behaviour as you would any other serious academic or pastoral concerns as discussed in the section of this guidance on serious academic or other concerns. But please note that we shall be grateful if you let us know immediately if a student misses even one supervision.

How honestly critical should I be in writing a report? How much should I sugar-coat?  

The College would like you to be as honest as possible whilst balancing positive and negative commentary. Mention what has been done well as well as areas for improvement. For many students that is likely to mean overwhelmingly positive commentary; and if a student has the potential to do really well, this should be reported clearly. In some cases, however, it may mean commentary that, however constructively presented, the student will not particularly enjoy reading. However, an open and clearly evidenced report may be vital in helping them to learn, grow and improve their performance. Unremittingly optimistic reports will not help the student. Disappointing results that follow unrealistic expectations can be particularly traumatic. Directors of Studies will have the opportunity to read reports before they release them to students. They can suggest changes if they feel that this is appropriate. They can also add their own gloss to reports. If you are hesitant about what to include or the tone of your report, please contact the DoS or Tutor. They know their students well enough to anticipate likely reactions. 

I think a student could benefit from some extra tuition, how should I proceed? 

Like all the Colleges, Corpus normally operates within the agreed supervision norms and guidance on group sizes. However, there routinely are cases where those involved in teaching a student feel that that student could benefit from some variation on the norms. This may emerge from an SpLD assessment or Student Support Document produced by the ADRC, or through other routes. If you think a student may need some remedial additional teaching, please contact their DoS. We would not expect you to put in additional time and effort without the DoS’s agreement and, if that goes beyond the norms, that of the Senior Tutor.   

Do I need to undertake training and what are the payment arrangements for training? 

New supervisors will be directed to the online training module when they register in CamCORS. Payment for new supervisors who undertake the training is handled centrally by the Office of Intercollegiate Services and not by individual Colleges. Payments will be made through a bulk process after the submission and approval of reports. You need not claim for this payment. The payment covers the intercollegiate training. In the rare instances where a department may further offer training, any issues connected to payment should be referred to the Department and not to Colleges.

How do I book a supervision room in Corpus Christi College?

The College provides rooms that may be booked by supervisors of Corpus students for groups of up to 10 people. There is an accessible supervision room on the ground floor of the College’s main court but a few supervision rooms are in the older part of the college with access via stairs only. All enquiries should be directed to the Tutorial Office staff (email: tutorial@corpus.cam.ac.uk). Please include information on the number of students in the supervision and whether you need access to a whiteboard. The Tutorial Office will advise you as to which room is suitable, check on availability and make the booking for you. No charge will be made when supervising Corpus students.