The presentation offers an analysis of supervisor adaptation of recently adopted central guidelines and criteria for MSc and MEng theses in the light of recent changes in the Higher Education Agency external evaluation practice and its current focus on the quality of theses. We conclude that the current supervision processes are problematic as they do not or only rarely promote sufficient formative practice towards disciplinary discursive expertise, which leads to theses of questionable standard or thesis projects that continue for sometimes up to one additional term or more since the insufficient command of knowledge production and its communication is only observed in the closing stages of thesis work.

In 2010 and 2011, Chalmers Learning Centre initiated a university-wide educational development project to promote and support constructive alignment (Biggs and Tang, 2007) at Chalmers (Adawi et al, 2011). As part of the constructive alignment project, we offered a range of staff development courses and seminars. The activities were oriented towards applying a scaffolded constructive alignment approach to all course development for the courses in the project. The constructive alignment project (CAP) involved 35 courses from several disciplines. Those responsible for the courses were supported over almost one year by the project team in setting up and running an action research project with the aim to improve the degree to which the learning outcomes, methods and assessment practices are constructively aligned in their courses. This case study draws on discussions and interviews with supervisors who supervised theses during the 11/12 academic year.

The study involves faculty-training groups at MSc and MEng levels and an analysis of the work supervisors have been doing to interpret central guidelines and thus contextualize them for their respective disciplines and projects (Malmqvist, Wedel & Enelund, 2011). The study also discusses some of the learning activities designed and implemented by the supervisors in their attempts to unpack abstract and generic criteria. This is followed by a discussion of formative assessment practices. In the new guidelines, the assigned examiner does the summative assessment. Such formative activities include workshops for peer-influenced problem-solving, collaborative supervision in reading seminars, and continually revisiting the student articulation and interpretation of the critera.