Lecturer Supervisors’ Perspectives on Challenges in Online Thesis Supervision

Abstract

The Covid-19 epidemic has resulted in an offline-to-online shift in EFL undergraduate thesis supervision, with all of its associated difficulties. As a result, this qualitative study used a constructivist epistemology to look at the challenges of online EFL thesis supervision from the perspective of the lecturer supervisors. 23 lecturer supervisors from higher educational institutions in Central Java and Papua were engaged as the participants. The data were gathered using In-depth interviews. The data were further analyzed according to the interactive model of analysis. The findings revealed a number of challenges in online thesis supervision, including being in the processes of adjusting to the shift from offline to online thesis supervision, ineffective communication between supervisors and students, a lack of time to always access online media, difficulties faced by students in collecting field data, and a decrease in students’ active participation in online thesis supervision. More research is expected to be done on the same topic as this study’s, but with more participants from other Indonesian regions. Such research might help confirm our present results and might add to the body of knowledge about online thesis supervision in Indonesia.