Is this normal in academia?? Am I missing something?

[Fishoutofbowl]

Hi, just looking to pick some academic brains about something, I’m just a student so hope I’m not intruding here!

Basically, I’m a masters student doing a study for my dissertation that was meant to be partly questionnaire data, partly an experimental section. The experimental part uses a particular piece of equipment that Im not confident using.I emailed my supervisor today to say that I don’t feel confident using it or analysing it and would rather not include it in my study. I’m going to collect more questionnaire data and adapt the experiment so it doesn’t include this equipment.
She said this was totally fine for my study and would work well but asked me to still collect data using the equipment on a large number of participants (more than I have so far), because she needs it for a grant for a separate study. Am I missing something here about why I should do that?

But if you can't share the whole story you have to expect that people are going to be cautious in their responses. You will get better responses from sharing the whole story within your university (Masters programme coordinator, or other appropriate person) than on an anonymous forum.

BTW I'm not a native English speaker. I don't particularly see how this is relevant to understanding academic communications.

Sure, but that’s the entire point of this forum gone then, no? I’m sorry, I didn’t mean to offend anyone by the native English speaker comment, perhaps I should have said fluent English speaker. All I meant was that her meaning was pretty black and white.

Surely the benefit of sharing the story is you can check the culture and expectations elsewhere. This has been very revealing in doing so. I'd rather go in to the discussion having checked norms and expectations within wider academia than in one department, where perhaps norms have yet to change (e.g. it used to be normal to get your psychology students to be your subjects, no opt-out, in exchange for course credits, til someone pointed out that's not really giving them freedom to consent!)

It’s also been helpful to be honest, in that I’ve been able to get the perspective that this is pretty common, which stops me feeling annoyed or resentful of the supervisor, which is helpful approaching a meeting openly .

I don't think that it is common for supervisors to get masters students to do unpaid research that would not really be needed for their masters dissertations. I am genuinely surprised that any academics would do this; it must be very subject dependent. Not naming the subject nor the type of institution makes it hard for people to comment accurately.

IME it's not common at all to get MSc students to do unpaid work.

The tricky part here is that a set of experiments were initially included in the project plan and the plan is now being changed. It's always tricky to manage project plans and expectations.
For example, is it likely that the part that may be excluded would have been given to another student in a separate project?
Maybe I missed it, but is the supervisor even aware that this student doesn't want to proceed to a PhD or is remotely interested in further research?

Nothing like a decent conversation to clear things up, so I hope all gets sorted to your satisfaction, OP.

Maybe I missed it, but is the supervisor even aware that this student doesn't want to proceed to a PhD or is remotely interested in further research?

Why is that even relevant? If Fishoutofbowl did want to go on to do a PhD it would give the supervisor more leverage to try to make Fishoutofbowl do this unpaid work for her, but that wouldn't make it any more acceptable.

It wouldn't be unpaid work, as such, but she could have been interested in further developing her skills by learning to use the equipment, or use results to proceed to a PhD studentship, regardless of her MSc thesis.

As I said, it's not a straightforward situation where she has been given unexpected extra work. It's work that had been agreed on previously, even if it was mentioned that it might need to be excluded. That requires negotiation and expectations management on both parts.

Ultimately, a Master's thesis is for the benefit of the student completing the Master's course. I find this idea that there's an implied quid pro quo whereby the supervisor is doing the student a massive favour by agreeing to supervise them and in return the student owes the supervisor favours to be completely alien.

I think this is particularly true for taught master's courses were the thesis project may need to be completed in the space of a couple of months, so there is generally little time for students to complete additional work unrelated to the thesis.

Nobody said the student owes the supervisor a massive favour, but it's also not true that an MSc thesis is solely for the benefit of the student.
Projects are often proposed by supervisors, hence according to their interests. Or students propose areas of study, which are discussed with potential supervisors according to what they think is the best scientifically, but that is also a good use of their time.

Honestly: an MSc thesis IS solely for the benefit of the student.
We’ve been having these conversations in our department where some colleagues said they would stop supervising if they couldn’t propose the topic (not about confidence to supervise it, merely won’t do anything that isn’t instantly instrumentally helping their career). I find this attitude baffling. We are educators, as well as researchers.

Ellboo I moved from a department which was pretty prescriptive of what UG could do for dissertations (topics specified, methods suggested, their data sometimes used by staff) to one where it was seen as the chance for a student to explore pretty much anything they liked within the discipline, and it was our problem to supervise it! I think a half way house could be a way forward. I certainly wouldn't blink if a student suggested changing their methods half way through, this would be completely normal to me. I also supervise UG (not Masters) outside my own field quite often, because other staff are on study leave or away and someone has to supervise them. It's fine if you are strong on methods and how to write.

I've discovered there are strong disciplinary boundaries around to what extent the student is doing their own work/in control of their topic and methods, and to what extent they are seen as doing a mini-apprenticeship in the model of the supervisor.

I've discovered there are strong disciplinary boundaries around to what extent the student is doing their own work/in control of their topic and methods, and to what extent they are seen as doing a mini-apprenticeship in the model of the supervisor.

True. Softer/social sciences seem to be more flexible than lab sciences, although it's not unheard of lab based students having their own project ideas. But this is in biomedical sciences. I have no idea what happens in other fields.

Hi just wanted to update this to say the situation has been ironed out between me and supervisor, I’m not doing it, but she’s going to use some of my participants to gather the data, so should be somewhat useful for her. Will update in October with the grade so we can see if she’s secretly furious then I suppose

Glad it’s sorted.

Thanks for coming back and updating, sounds like a good meeting in which you both got (some of) what you wanted.

Glad you’ve got a resolution you can live with. Hopefully she will be professional about your marking.

Glad its sorted for you op

Good luck with it!

Will update in October with the grade so we can see if she’s secretly furious then I suppose grin

Hopefully not. Although many students imagine vengeful spiteful lecturers picking favourites and venting spleen, we overwhelmingly mark honestly and fairly. Often pressurised to give higher marks by management (see other thread), held to ransome by ' student experience' and are expected to churn out our own high quality work in our spare time.
We are told to 'use' postgrad projects to push research forward to better the REF score for the department ( therefore money) and are required to get research funds to keep our jobs.