Part Two: Course Completion

Project Supervisor

An important feature of an Athabasca University course is the project design supervisor. It is the project design supervisor’s responsibility to help students complete the course successfully. A letter containing your project design supervisor’s name, address, and telephone number was mailed to you shortly after you enrolled in HSRV 455: Project Design. If you have not received such a letter, please contact the Learning Services department by calling (780) 675–6196 as soon as possible.

Your project design supervisor has excellent academic qualifications and is committed to helping students learn at a distance. He or she is available to answer your questions about course content or how to approach your research. The project design supervisor may also be able to direct you to the correct person or department to help you with other problems that may be hindering your progress in your course or program. In addition, your project design supervisor will be responsible for marking your written work for the course. You may call your project design supervisor, collect, from any point in Canada or the United States, during hours set by mutual agreement, or leave a message on the project design supervisor’s voice mail or email at any time.

You are advised to call your project design supervisor as soon as you receive the course materials, and then get into the habit of phoning regularly, either when you would like to discuss something you have read, or when you run into any special problem.

The project design supervisor is the person with whom the student negotiates a detailed learning contract once the program coordinator has accepted the prospective student’s project proposal. During the development of the proposal the student and coordinator may already have a project design supervisor in mind. However, the role of the project design supervisor begins formally only after the student’s application to be admitted to the course has been successful, and the program coordinator gives written permission for the student to register in the course.

Once registered the project design supervisor is responsible for overseeing the student’s progress in two stages. First, the project design supervisor works with the student, providing advice concerning the scope and content of the learning contract which is to be completed within two months of the start date of the student’s registration in the course. Second, the project design supervisor provides written and oral feedback on the preliminary research proposal, the literature review and the research paper, which are the required written work for this course. Variations to this scheme of evaluation can be made by means of the learning contract, with the approval of the program coordinator.

Should the case arise that the student or the project design supervisor cannot complete the learning contract as originally agreed to, one or both of them is to contact the program coordinator.

When mailing an assignment to your project design supervisor, be sure to attach a supervisor–marked exercise form, and to keep a copy of your written work, in case the original goes astray in the mail. Please allow several working days, in addition to mailing time each way, before you expect to receive the graded assignment. Your project design supervisor will be pleased to provide additional feedback over the telephone or on email; be sure to mention any questions you have about the assignment or the grade.

Keep your project design supervisor’s letter of introduction with your course materials, and, for quick reference, use the space provided below to record information on your project design supervisor.

Project design supervisor’s name:

Address:

Telephone number:

Contact hours:

In contacts with your project design supervisor, or in any correspondence or other contact with the University, you may be asked to provide your student ID number. Record this number in the space provided below. Your student ID number will expedite the processing of requests, grades, and administrative matters.

Student ID number: