Abstract

Nursing faculty shortage has long been a concern because the career development in the academic field is generally considered as less attractive than that in the clinical field. To overcome this, our School has developed a Guided Research Scheme (GRS) for high-caliber undergraduates to build up their capacity for scholarly inquiry. However, the coexistent supervisory roles of different programmes might have added tension between teaching and research workloads for the existing faculty members and jeopardized the student-supervisor relationship due to limited attention devoted for each student. This project attempts to launch a pilot scheme to engage MPhil-PhD students in the supervisory roles for undergraduates who joined the GRS. Two training workshops about mentorship will be provided to prepare the PhD students. It would equip MPhil-PhD students with coaching skills which are essential for their future career development. Six MPhil-PhD students will be selected and pair-matched to provide advice and support to undergraduates for developing research interest and skills, together with the faculty members as partners. The work shadowing experience would enable the MPhil-PhD students to understand research supervision from another perspective, relearn research skills through teaching and enhance their communication skills, and increase the productivity and impacts of the research works as a whole.