Re-thinking the dissertation and doctoral supervision

The doctoral dissertation is the final obstacle for most apprentice scholars. This paper considers the place and purpose of the dissertation and argues that it no longer provides an adequate preparation for the types of work that PhD graduates will do within and outside the academy. The common dissertation format - book length, single-authored, print-based - is at odds with a world where knowledge is made collaboratively and disseminated digitally. Moreover, the effort required to produce a dissertation keeps students from writing the many other genres of academic discourse, and reduces the opportunities that supervisors have to mentor new scholars. The paper finishes by offering a number of alternatives to the traditional dissertation and examines the barriers to implementing those alternatives.