THE DEVELOPMENT OF ONLINE THESIS SUPERVISION AT UNIVERSITAS TERBUKA

Abstract

In recent years, especially since the COVID-19 pandemic struck, online learning has been implemented in higher education institutions. Despite the trend of many universities to implement online learning since the COVID-19 pandemic, the graduate school of Universitas Terbuka (UT) has been offering online classes since 2013. While student tutoring is integrated into the LMS with fixed schedules, the time for online thesis supervision is arranged individually by the student supervisors. Due to the rapid development of digital platforms for learning and collaboration and the wide internet penetration throughout Indonesia, the UT Graduate School initiated the development of online student supervision. The urgency of developing online thesis student supervision at UT stems from the need to monitor student supervision across Indonesia, especially because many supervisors are lecturers from partner universities. The platform will use Moodle because students are accustomed to this LMS in their study at UT. It is expected that the supervision platform can speed up the process of writing a thesis while still accommodating the different schedules of the supervisory team. Implementing online thesis supervision is essential to enhance the quality of the thesis. However, it is necessary to study the literature to investigate the efficacy, challenges, and best practices of online thesis supervision implemented by other institutions. This paper will also focus on the impact of online platforms on supervisor-student interactions and the challenges students face in using online thesis supervision practices