Perception of Co-supervisors in Doctoral Education Towards Mobile Information Systems for Higher Education in Malaysia

In the post-Covid era, mobile information systems have greater potential for supporting the doctoral supervision process, including co-supervision pedagogy in doctoral education. However, little is known about its design and development. This study explores the potential of designing a mobile information system for doctoral co-supervision in higher education. It is anticipated that the contributions of this study (as consideration areas in the user requirements gathering phase) would help system designers when involved in designing mobile information systems. First, this study examines the main challenges doctoral co-supervisors face in Malaysian higher education institutions. A focus group interview examines ICT use and its integration with supervision pedagogies like meetings, reading draft, and giving supervisees feedback. A total of ten doctoral co-supervisors who have completed co-supervision with at least one doctoral candidate were interviewed at three Malaysian universities. According to the findings of our study, co-supervisors communicate using a variety of ICT, including email, mobile phones, Microsoft Teams, Skype, and social media platforms such as Facebook. Some of the supervisors use Microsoft SharePoint for collaborative writing. The majority of them saw the importance of integrating ICT with co-supervision pedagogy. The study also discovered the need for increased use of collaborative-based technology in promoting collaborative co-supervision pedagogy. These include virtual spaces for the scholarly community, such as an online discussion forum and a collaborative writing space for providing feedback on supervisees' report drafts. In future work, a mobile information system or digital collaborative tool that can accommodate a complex virtual space through cloud computing will be designed, and the proposed digital tool will empower rather than control or direct the process of learning.