Effective strategies of doctorate students’ blended supervision and mentorship at school of Education, Moi University, Kenya

Abstract

Post COVID-19 era compounded by the proliferation of co-supervision as a result of multidisciplinary research studies and internalization of education has necessitated blended supervision and mentorship. Blended supervision provides panacea to graduate studies where research supervision could be done remotely through blended model which is a hybrid of online and face-to-face. This study sought to evaluate effective strategies of doctorate students’ blended supervision and mentorship programme at School of Education, Moi University, Kenya. The following objectives guided the study: to assess the level of preparedness by the doctorate supervisors in adoption of blended supervision and mentorship; to determine the availability of the ICT infrastructure and platforms that support blended supervision and mentorship; and to establish the challenges in adoption of blended supervision and mentorship. The target populations were doctorate supervisors, doctorate candidates, ICT support personnel, and Dean postgraduate studies at Moi University. The study adopted interpretative philosophical paradigm thus qualitative research design. Constructivist learning theory of learning was adopted. Simple random sampling of postgraduate students and faculty; purposive sampling of the ICT staff, Dean postgraduate studies and doctorate supervisors was used. Open-ended questionnaires, document analysis, and interview schedule were employed to collect data from the respondents. Data were analyzed descriptively and through thematic coding. Key findings revealed that there was inadequate preparation of doctorate supervision, lack of feedback expectation tool thus delayed responses and poor connectivity especially during interaction. The study findings would inform policy, adoption, and implementation of blended supervision in Africa higher education institutions and would be of significance to policy makers, researchers, and institutions of higher education in enhancement of doctorate students’ blended supervision and mentorship.