teaching-phd-skills

Why this exists

This lab runs three tiers, so PhD students supervise before anyone has asked whether they can. The characteristic failure is handing an REU student an unbounded task — “look into battery degradation models” — and reading it as the student’s failure ten weeks later when nothing is finished. It was not. An unbounded task given to someone without the context to bound it themselves is a supervision failure, and it is entirely preventable by writing three things down before the handoff.

External material

CIMER’s Entering Mentoring curriculum — the evidence-based standard for research mentor training, and the source most institutional programmes draw from. It covers the relationship. The mechanic below covers the task, which is where this specific failure lives.

Governing part

Part 1 governs the repo the mentee will be working in — including the ordering in Git and GitHub, which now applies to somebody who has never used git. Their first commit is your responsibility.

The mechanic

Before the handoff, write:

1. A definition of done. Not “understand X” — a thing that exists when it is finished, which you would recognise on sight.
2. A data path. Exactly where the input is, and where output goes. This is where the archetype from Code folder structure earns its keep.
3. A checkpoint date before the work is due, at which being off track is still recoverable.

Hand it off. Let them work.

Then the retrospective, which is the graded part: name at least two things you left underspecified. You will find them. Everyone does. The list is the deliverable, because it is the thing that makes the next handoff better, and it is what goes into the handbook for the student who supervises after you.

Deliverable

The task brief plus the retrospective, with the mentee’s output linked.

Competency check

• Task brief contains a definition of done that names an artifact
• Input and output paths specified, consistent with the repo archetype
• A checkpoint date, before the deadline
• Retrospective names at least two underspecified items
• The mentee’s actual output is linked
• If they used git, their .gitignore was verified before their first commit

Turning it in

This replaces your writing entry for the week you do it. Submit it to that week’s WW assignment in Canvas — the same one you would have submitted anyway. It is not an extra piece of work on top of the log.

• In the text box: what you thought was obvious and was not.
• You hand in: The task brief (definition of done, input and output paths, checkpoint date) plus your retrospective naming at least two things you left underspecified, with the mentee’s output linked

You do not submit anything to the milestone yet. When all four skills in M6 are done, submit the M6 — Stewardship assignment, which is just an index saying which week each one went in.

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