Abstract:

Universities are challenging to produce quality graduates and have introduced different type of teaching methods in the curriculum to address this challenge. Among other approaches, research project components is a way to link theory into practice, enhance employability skills of the students and enhance the industry university collaboration that are essential requirements for quality graduates. There are two main participants in a research project, student and supervisor. A student or group of students is doing a research under the guidance of a supervisor or supervisors. Research supervision is a unique teaching methodology and according to the Connell, it is certainly one of the most complex and problematic among other pedagogy methods and lead to high dropout rate. Also it is well known problem that large proton of research students are unable to complete their research within the scheduled time and the quality issues. The number of student’s enrollment in research and lack of resources for thesis supervision increase this failure. Among other reasons the selection of an interest topic and a suitable supervisor are essential requirements for the success of the research project.
Although students, supervisors and industry representatives has many new research ideas there is a lack of communication between these parties that can prevent initiation of interesting and valuable research for all stakeholders. Many students are selecting research topic without proper understanding and of the topic and its importance. Especially there is a lack of relationship between students and industries that can be used as a very rich and useful source of idea. An education software system has not addressed this issue properly and there is a lack of research in this field.
This research focus is identifying existing issues in the initial stage of the research supervision process with the purpose of designing a framework to get support from the Information and Communication Technology (ICT). The research utilizes both quantitative and qualitative data analysis techniques. A survey conducted to identify issues in the stage of project idea selection. Four type of questionnaire will be distributed for Supervisors, Students, and Administrators and Industry partners. Further selected participants will be interviewed to clarify unclear problematic areas. Finally critical issues and problems explained as a model that can to be used a foundation for future investigations for the researches to find solutions to solve them.

Keywords:

Thesis supervision, Research project, Issues in research process, ICT for education, Industry – University collaboration, Research project initiation.