Cause and goal of the project
The thesis process poses well-documented challenges, such as procrastination, difficulties with structuring, and an overreliance on supervision (De Kleijn et al., 2016). At Maastricht University’s School of Business and Economics, over half of master’s students reported delays in completing their thesis, citing a lack of clarity and motivation. These outcomes point to a need for more structured support and fostering students’ self-regulation.
The goal of the project was to design, implement, and evaluate an online tool providing step-by-step guidance throughout the planning, monitoring, and evaluation phases of the thesis process. Grounded in Zimmerman’s self-regulated learning framework (2002), the tool combines a structured portfolio including reflective planning and monitoring questions with chapter-based writing modules including support for outlining and feedback-seeking. Through interactive prompts, guiding questions and relevant resources, the tool encourages students to effectively plan their work and reflect on their progress. Simultaneously, it supports supervisors in offering more consistent and aligned guidance within existing supervision structures.
Plan and method
The project adopted a mixed-method design, informed by design-based research approaches. First, reflective discussions were held with students and supervisors, to revise the prototype and implementation strategy of the online structuring tool. Subsequently, the tool was implemented in the curriculum via an online portfolio platform (PebblePad), the online learning management system (Canvas) and an interactive survey platform (Qualtrics). The tool was implemented through workshops, supervision practices and self-study.
For evaluation, quantitative and qualitative data were gathered through repeated surveys among students and supervisors including:
- Self-regulated learning (self- and supervisor assessment);
- Research skills (self- and supervisor assessment);
- Perceived supervision, motivation, stress and workload (students);
- Performance (proposal and final thesis assessment);
- And general satisfaction (both groups).
The design of measurement instruments and moments was informed by the Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007) to better understand explanatory factors behind student needs, experiences and struggles throughout the thesis process and to interpret (lack of) observed effects.
Challenges included aligning the tool with varied supervision practices and ensuring student engagement with the tool beyond superficial usage. While students generally appreciated structured guidance, we also observed that some aspects were adopted by students in a highly literal way, answering prompts without integrating them into broader narrative writing tasks. In these cases, structured support may have inadvertently constrained autonomy or deep-level processing. Additionally, mixed alignment of students’ and supervisors’ perceptions of self-regulation and research skill development suggest that structured tools must be implemented flexibly and critically, allowing space for adaptation to students’ evolving needs.
Evaluation and results
The project yielded valuable insights into how students develop through and experience the thesis process with structured support tools. A combination of student and supervisor surveys and reflective team discussions revealed both the benefits and limitations of such tools and highlighted developments in students’ skills and perceived demands and resources, as well as notable discrepancies between student and supervisor assessments of self-regulated learning and research skills. A key result was the recognition that while structured support can support students in early stages like planning and outlining, it may limit deeper synthesis in later broader and narrative writing tasks. Students tended to underestimate their self-regulation and research skills compared to supervisors’ assessments. Nevertheless, both groups reported skill development over the course of the thesis. Stress and workload increased over time, while motivation dipped mid-process before recovering, with perceived supervision remaining consistently high. Based on our findings, we recommend that educators using research in their teaching adopt a flexible and reflective approach, tailoring tools to students’ readiness and embedding space for autonomy and integration. Research-informed innovation should support iterative adaptation and critical inquiry into what works, for whom, and why.
Literature
Bakker, A. B., & Demerouti, E. (2007). The job demands‐resources model: State of the art. Journal of Managerial Psychology, 22(3), 309-328. https://doi.org/10.1108/02683940710733115
De Kleijn, R. A., Bronkhorst, L. H., Meijer, P. C., Pilot, A., & Brekelmans, M. (2016). Understanding the up, back, and forward-component in master's thesis supervision with adaptivity. Studies in Higher Education, 41(8), 1463-1479. https://doi.org/10.1080/03075079.2014.980399
Zimmerman, B. J. (2002). Becoming a self-regulated learner: An overview. Theory into Practice, 41(2), 64-70.
