Personal Blogs

This post shares some notes that I made during a continuing professional development (CPD) event organised by the Research Career Development Team (RCD) that took place on 6 November 2024. The event was all about how a third party monitor supports doctoral students and doctoral level study. 

The event was pitched as being useful for “those who are new to third party monitoring”. It’s key objective and learning outcome were to help participants understand what the OU expects of third party monitors, whilst also sharing practices and experiences between participants.

Before moving sharing the key points that I took away, I would just like to share that I’m mostly writing this piece from the perspective of a third party monitor, sharing points with other potential fellow third party monitors. Although I’ve made this post widely available, some of the links that I’ve shared are very OU specific, and will not be available outside the OU.

Third party monitoring: the role

The aim of the third party monitor (TPM) is to provide pastoral support for research students outside the supervision team. A TPM is an academic member of staff who has had research degree supervision experience. They are there to provide confidential, independent, and dispassionate support. They are able to offer advice about how to deal with the challenges of doctoral research, how to deal with and handle conflict within (and possibly outside) the supervision team, and can offer perspectives about research process. A TPM can provide practical opinions about the supervision process. They may, for example, help to identify resource management difficulties; a student might meet with supervisors too frequently, or not frequently enough. A TPM may be able to offer practical advice on how to broach this with supervisors. The key point is that a TPM must always act in the best interest of the student.

In terms of meetings, there is an obligation for a TPM to meet with a student at least once a year, but a student might email the monitor at any point throughout the year. Meetings do not need to be in person; they can take place online. The first meeting should take place by the fifth month following registration. In my own practice, I tend to meet with students every quarter, but I would be happy to meet more regularly if there are any emerging or ongoing issues that need to be addressed or resolved. Meetings can be documented through a form (which is used within the WELS faculty) but this is not compulsory. All that needs to be recorded is a date of a meeting.

The TPM is described in the section 6 of the university research degree regulations. There are also third party monitoring guidelines from the graduate school network. Any member of staff who is carrying out third party monitoring should record it within their academic workload management (AWM) tool. At the time of writing I don’t have an official figure, but a guideline to work to is: one day per year, for each student you are monitoring.

What happens if things are not going well?

During the session, there was a useful discussion about what to do if things are not going very well. I noted down some important points.

The first point is: if possible, have discussions with everyone. Before even picking up the phone, gain permission from the student you are supporting; confidentiality, trust, and transparency in terms of actions are paramount.

It isn’t easy doing research. Depending on the topic, it can be sometimes lonely. It can sometimes place significant demands on reserves of intrinsic motivation. When looking at a subject in a new way, this can have a potentially destabilising way of seeing the world. All this means is that there are times when doing research can negatively affect our mental health. A TPM might be able to help just by having a chat about how everything is going. You can also signpost some resources that relate to staying mentally healthy.

Sometimes, you may well need to seek advice to answer some questions which may come up when meeting a student. Two key points of help were mentioned: the graduate school, or a group of staff within your academic school that supports postgraduate students. If something is serious, you might wish to contact your head of school, or their delegate.

Resources

A number of useful resources were shared during this session. The OU national support network that follows isn’t specific to the TPM role, but offers pointers to a whole host of different resources.

• Research Degree Regulations
• Research Career Development (RCD): Third Party Monitoring Resources
• OU Graduate school network
• OU National support network

There is also something called the STEM Mentoring Scheme: Framework, which dates back to 2021.

Reflections

At the time of writing, I’m a third party monitor for two doctoral students.

When I started as a third party monitor, I have to confess that I didn’t really know what I was doing. My interaction with students began with an email introduction from a graduate student supervisor (or lead). The was the followed with organising an informal meeting between myself and the student, where we introduced each other.

My big take away from this session was the importance of active listening and relationship building. Empathy also plays an important role. As third party supervisors we all have our prior doctoral experience we can draw upon. In some cases, it can be about being practical; sometimes third party monitors need to find things out for our students. In turn, we may need be their advocate, but always with their permission.

I found the discussion about the formality of a form, and its usefulness interesting. During my own meetings, I do sometimes make notes, but it does always depend on what is being said and what needs to be done.

Given the title of the session, I was expecting to learn more about mentoring, perhaps even something about models of mentoring. At various points in my OU career, I’ve been both a mentor and a mentee. Sometimes these relationships have gone well, other times less so. To help others more effectively, I feel as if I need to know more about how to ‘mentor’ well.

Acknowledgements

The event was facilitated by Dr Liz FitzGerald, a Senior Lecturer in the OU’s Institute of Educational Technology.