C. Effective Delivery
In stage 1, coaching will take place via 6 workshops covering steps 1-5 of the program with 3 individual personal
coaching sessions by a professional coach, while stage 2 will cover steps 6-9 via 6 coaching workshops and 3 individual personal coaching sessions with the addition of 3 peer coaching sessions, where each participant will be
required to coach and be coached by a fellow participant for 3 sessions each, using the P3-GROWTHS model. The format of delivery, assessment and evaluation is given in Table 1.
TABLE I. FORMAT OF DELIVERY FOR P3-GROWTHS PROGRAM
To ensure the successful running of the program and maintain the integrity of the coaching process, which can be summed up as developing self-awareness, becoming self decisive about change and taking self-directed action towards that change, the following guidelines will be followed based on the recommendations of Huston and
Weaver [10].
a. Goal Setting
All forms of goal setting, personal andacademic as part of the program will be done by the participant at any given stage of the program, to ensure total ownership of the process, as the effectiveness of coaching is about taking self-directed action and ownership of the goals and the course of action taken to reach the outcome should at all times be owned by the participant.
b. Voluntary Participation
Following on the heels of ownership, it is vital to ensure that all participation is
voluntary and at no time any participant is feels pressured or coerced, in any given part in the program as a lack of willingness affects their ability to achieve goals. This means that should the individual circumstances change in a given participant during the course of the program, allowances should be made to accommodate that. The same applies to if a participant chooses to discontinue the coaching relationship citing a lack of ‘coaching-fit’ meaning that the relationship is not working for either or both parties.
c. Confidentiality
It is essential to maintain a high level of confidentiality as far as the contents of discussion within the coaching relationship is concerned. The participants will be identified only as taking part in the program as it involves their supervisors, but no details of their progress will be released. The data from the surveys and individual goals will only be available to the experienced coaches and not to the faculty or the supervisor of the participant, so as to avoid any bias towards the participant.
d. Assessment
It is important to ensure a uniform standard is maintained across the program. The main forms of assessment for successful completion of the program will be participation in all the workshops (or viewing the video recording where they have failed to attend) the required one-one coaching sessions with experienced coach and two way peer coaching sessions. Records of participation will be maintained for statistical purposes, without identifying individuals by name and their feedback will be used for evaluation purposes by maintaining anonymity. Participants will be encouraged to obtain feedback from their coaches and coaches towards self-assessment and Improvement but no records will be kept of the individual feedback within sessions to maintain confidentiality.
e. Evaluation
There will be a formative evaluation as far as the effectiveness of the running of the program is concerned at the end of stage 1, where all the participants and experienced coaches will give feedback through a questionnaire on how the program can be improved, so that these improvements can be accommodated in stage 2. There will also be a summative evaluation of the program as a whole at the end of stage 2, done by the participant and their coaches alike, especially on the unique aspects of stage 2, namely on peer coaching. Additionally there will be ongoing adjustments based on participant feedback to enable flexibility so that the program requirements don’t compete for time with their formal research.
f. Institutional Support
It is vital that the program has the patronage of the Science and Engineering faculty, especially the dean, HDR office, the heads of schools and the respective supervisors of the participants. This support needs to be conveyed in meaningful ways and promoted as such through newsletters, faculty level advertising and featured as a new initiative to support the learning and teaching efforts in higher degree research. Acknowledgement of the role of coaching and providing incentives monetary or otherwise for successfully participating in the program will encourage participants and coaches alike and will send out a clear message to the supervisors, and other personnel at the school and faculty levels of the commitment required to ensure the successful delivery of the program. Such acknowledgement will reinforce the efforts at all levels of the program and encourage better performance overall.
III. EVALUATION & DISCUSSION
A. Short Term Impact
Qualitative and quantitative data will be gathered at 3 stages in the program (Table 1) using surveys which will be used to evaluate the effect of coaching on the students. The comparative scores from the separate surveys will form the basis for the short term effectiveness of the coaching process in relation to helping the participants achieve their respective goals. Given the subjective nature of the evaluation of success, a comparison statistical analysis will be carried out to assess the perceptions of the students to that of their supervisor’s on the progress they have made and ‘success’ they have achieved. The feedback comments from the surveys will enable a qualitative analysis to be made on the effectiveness of the program as seen by the students and supervisors alike.
B. Medium-Long Term Impact
Although the scope of this study enables evaluation of specific goals over the duration of the program, the type and nature of the goals set by the participants may mean that the total impact of the coaching program can only be effectively evaluated 1-2 years after the completion of the program. For instance, a participant may set a career related goal half way through the PhD program and would have taken action to work on learning a set of specific skills with the intention of achieving their goal, which in reality can be measured once the PhD program is completed and the participant enters the workforce. Hence it will be important to device means to capture the medium to long term impact of the program and get relevant data 1-2 years after the program.
Some key questions to ask in this regard will be:
C. Relevance of Coaching to HDR students
The results of this program will overall enable to measure the effect coaching has on the development of HDR graduates towards holistic success where the process is driven by the student from start to finish. The lessons learnt from this study will enable an evaluation of the current teaching and learning practices, research supervision and the support services available for HDR students at the university level to be further enhanced by incorporating the coaching approach to the delivery of these services. In the learning and teaching area for HDR’s, this means flexibility to for learning outcomes to be set by the students and the ability make decisions with regards to the approach taken to achieve them. This will enable students to drive the learning and research process more and have more ownership of their research outcomes. Supervision style will also benefit from a coaching approach in that the students will feel that the supervisors are not dictators or employers with superior knowledge as the following comment implies, but as facilitators of the learning and research process.
My supervisor sometimes thinks that he knows everything about my research. He does not give me a chance to express my ideas and I feel this is due to my English not being so good. And also I am quite shy [14].
Furthermore, the coaching approach to supervision would enable the supervisor to have a greater awareness of the student needs and provide more pastoral type of care that HDR student indicate they need from their supervisor, which supervisors may not be aware of or may not see as part of their role in supervision [15].
IV. CONCLUSIONS
The current paper advocates the need to formulate a broader definition of success for engineering and technology graduates to promote holistic growth in them and better integrate them to the work force and society in general. Coaching as an approach to learning and teaching in this context is a means help develop the person holistically so as to produce better coherence and consistency between engineering education and practice.
REFERENCES
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[8] Overview and FAQ. Available:
[9] E. P. Bettinger and R. Baker. (2011, The Effects of Student Coaching in College: An Evaluation of a Randomized Experiment in Student Mentoring. Available: http://cepa.stanford.edu/sites/default/files/bettinger_baker_030711.pdf
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[13] P Silva, "FULL_LIFE COACHING P3_GROWTHS Model," unpublished work.2012
[14] P. Gudimetla, P. K. D. V. Yarlagadda, T. Sahama, and K. Woodman, "Assessment of the influence of cultural barriers to HDR Supervision of Non-English speaking background (NESB) Students in Engineering & Information Technology (IT) Disciplines," in The 10th Global Congress on Manufacturing and Management - Innovative Design for Sustainability In Manufacturing and Management, King Mongkut's University of Technology North Bangkok, Thailand, Century Park Hotel, Bangkok, pp. 51-56.2010.
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