Lack of structure

Supervisors struggle to follow students’ projects
if they lack structure and any sort of predictability.

Any (research) project has its share of unforeseen twists and turns. But none of these twists and turns have as challenging of an impact as a fickle junior researcher who changes their plans and assessments seemingly every other day. While an overly dynamic approach to the project does not necessarily mean certain demise for the project, it will mean an inordinate amount of work for the mentor to keep up - and to keep up motivation.

Mentoring can work well if the attempted goal of the mentee is clear to the mentor. It becomes impossible if there is no shared and more or less dependable perspective of where the mentee wants to end up or how they attempt to get there. Of course, there are multiple imaginable reasons for sudden changes of direction in a research project. They can broadly be grouped in two categories: voluntary and involuntary. Frequent, voluntary changes in the project’s design or implementation might result from an uncertain or possibly not thoroughly committed researcher. It will be sensible to advise them that frequent changes can make mentoring them either unattractive or impossible. Don’t forget to mention that their adjustments only serve them well if they actually help to produce a better outcome. Frequent involuntary changes often stem from poor planning: data that was thought as accessible turned out not to be, methodology that seemed manageable turned out as too difficult. This can be avoided by encouraging students to proactively plan the risk-portfolio of their project. Where does the student want to grow, where do they want to build on already acquired strengths? Especially after a number of difficulties and set-backs that made their project difficult to follow, it might be good advice to rather adjust toward a less risky route for the remainder of the project.

Instead of coping with seemingly confused student research projects that appear as ever-changing and uncertain stumbling, let’s rather include a layer of risk-management in the conceptual draft phase of each project.

Ideally, a shared understanding of a tolerable level of twists and turns should be established with each new student researcher at the beginning of their project. You might set boundaries very broadly or rather narrow. Consequently, students might choose a suitable risk profile and either go with a project they know how to do and excel at perfection - or, on the polar opposite, draft a project that requires ample growth and, in doing so, introduces more risk. Consequently, the challenge of seemingly confused projects that seem hard for mentors to follow is merely another example of a lack of communication among both, more academics and junior researchers.

How do you try to help student researchers who seemingly change their plans every other day? Do you let them find their way or try to steer them toward a more productive and systematic progress?