To define these terms, we must identify how they are similar and different and the roles in which they occur. In the research literature, we found an array of terms used to describe these broadly differentiated categories of researcher, including novice, emerging and early career researchers as opposed to experienced, established and globally competent researchers.^{4,18,19,20,21} For Frandsen and Nicolaisen, ‘emerging researchers’ and ‘early career researchers’ are academics at the beginning of their research careers.¹⁸ They are establishing themselves under the guidance of others while completing their postgraduate degrees, publishing, securing funding and building research partners. They are active followers who find it difficult to navigate the research process and secure opportunities for collaborative publication. Early career researchers are typically trying to balance high teaching loads with the intensity of conducting research, publishing and networking with other researchers.²⁰ ‘Established’ or ‘leading researchers’ are recognised as globally competent researchers, often working in the interconnected worlds of research and business, where communication has to be effective across all disciplines.¹⁸ They need to be equipped with the skills, knowledge, attitudes and behaviours for applying for funding and conducting quality, ethical research. They can work independently and, as masters in their field, they should be acting as mentors and shaping the direction of knowledge production.⁴

During the COVID-19 pandemic in 2021, a transdisciplinary team of committed, concerned and influential researchers from all faculties and research units was tasked by the management of our UoT to explore a new culture of online supervision, to foster supervision capacity for excellence in research scholarship and, in particular, to attract and retain doctoral students to meet the NDP 2030 target. At the end of 13 weeks, we had developed the Sisonke supervision mentoring programme Learning Programme (LP). (Sisonke is an isiXhosa word meaning ‘together’ or ‘to bridge’). This LP is shaped by six unique features:

Firstly, it includes 12 weeks of input by leading researchers at our UoT on a variety of research topics decided upon by the needs of the mentees. We intentionally chose to use a bottom-up approach: as Conti et al. suggest, the processes stemming from such an approach allow people with a ‘deep understanding of local conditions … [to] lead the development of innovations and ensure a transformation that is more aligned with local visions and preferences’.²² The approach appeared to encourage many to join the LP as mentees.

Secondly, participation was not only voluntary, but was also extended to all faculties and research units. We drew on Samuel’s definitions of multidisciplinary research – ‘different disciplines working on different aspects of a problem independently within their discipline boundaries’, interdisciplinary research – ‘restructuring and integrating existing disciplinary approaches to address problems relevant to all participating disciplines’ and transdisciplinary research ‘seeking to integrate different lines of work from contributing disciplines to create new approaches or even new scientific disciplines’.²³ To the extent that it incorporated all faculties and disciplines, the Sisonke programme involved transdisciplinary research to create new learning for the mentors and mentees engaged in this programme.

Thirdly, one of the objectives of the Sisonke programme was to support the professional and personal advancement of novice supervisors to develop their own self-efficacy in mentoring.²⁴ When mentees felt that they had acquired sufficient academic wisdom to supervise an emerging supervisor, they could return the following year as a mentor. This cyclical approach, which acknowledges mentees’ rapid growth in research capacity and responsibility, has encouraged many of them to grow into active mentors.

Fourthly, many of these mentor and mentee relationships continue outside of the Sisonke programme, leading to further transdisciplinary research. Nunan et al. claim that supervisory relationships are reciprocal and embedded in a broader work environment that can foster organisational growth and relational longevity.²⁵ For relationships to flourish, establishing trust, sharing viewpoints, asking questions and mutual respect are necessary.²⁴ Building a trusting, open communication environment is paramount to enhance continued learning and mentoring support outside of the programme.

Fifthly, reflection is paramount throughout the Sisonke programme. As a learning opportunity, the programme assists mentees to summarise and critically reflect on their breakaway discussions, promoting transformative learning²⁶ and the development of higher-order cognitive processes and metacognition, all skills needed for postgraduate supervision. An unexpected outcome of the reflection process was that, by interacting with their senior supervisors, the mentees experienced changes in their understanding of supervisory perspectives and practices.²⁷ The programme confirmed that supervisor development within a community of practice is a valuable pedagogical support.

Finally, in team supervision, there are both vertical and horizontal structures.²⁸ In vertical collaboration, there are hierarchical structures in terms of which one supervisor is the principal or leading supervisor, while the others are novice supervisors or have fewer responsibilities. In horizontal collaboration, the supervisory load has no hierarchy and responsibilities are evenly shared. In the Sisonke programme, mentors and mentees learned from each other and no one person assumed overall authority. The mentors were not seen as providing knowledge so much as promoting thinking and discovery, in an environment where everyone was learning from and with each other.²⁹

Supervision is an essential element in the doctoral study process. In the traditional one-to-one supervision approach, doctoral students conduct their own research with the supervision of one supervisor¹⁴; in the United States, there are doctoral committees, and in the United Kingdom, a main supervisor is supported by a group of co-supervisors.²¹ Alternatively, a team of supervisors and a cohort of students may work together with a principal investigator on a common project.³⁰

In team and cohort supervision, which is becoming increasingly common across all disciplines,²⁸ there may be a team of two or more supervisors working with more than one student. Such arrangements create communities of practice, encouraging supervisors to reflect on their own learning, clarify their role in the team and how they respond to the needs of students.²⁷ Previous research has identified potential advantages and disadvantages associated with team and cohort supervision.^14,28,31 One advantage is that it ‘limits the risk of incompetence [thereby] increasing the likelihood of successful completing’.³⁰ Ngulube proposes that the quality of the students’ learning improves through having meaningful input from a few supervisors, because there is more frequent support and wider regular feedback.¹⁴ Stakeholders from industry may be included in the supervision team.³² Maritz and Prinsloo claim that by working in teams, early career supervisors receive more supervisor capacity development and a reduction in workload, while there is a concomitant increase in student satisfaction.³¹ There is consequently a reduced risk of students dropping out. However, tensions may emerge when students are confused by conflicting advice or get stuck in their research.³³ Pyhältö et al. warn that there may be differences between the ways in which disciplines work, particularly noting that in the natural sciences, there is more one-to-one supervision.

Our guiding framework for the online Sisonke research project was the CoI theory, originally developed by Dewey.³⁴ We chose to use the CoI framework to develop a deeper understanding of our participants’ experiences, specifically because it embraces a constructivist paradigm and uses teaching, cognitive and social presences to construct new knowledge.^35,36 Inquiry and community were at the core of the programme, which focused on capacitating the volunteer mentor and mentee supervisors for successful retention of their doctoral students and recruitment of postdoctoral fellows. Wang et al. posit that communities develop through knowledge shared online, arguing that ‘strong feelings of community increase the flow of information, the availability of support, commitment to group goals, cooperation among members and satisfactions with group efforts’.³⁷ To develop a communal educational experience that was meaningful to our participants, the project drew on the interactions and relationships among the three independent, but intersecting presences necessary for a successful educational experience: teaching, cognitive and social presences.³⁵ To understand how the presences work together, we shall analyse each presence separately, then explicitly connect the online learning of the Sisonke programme to each presence. The discussion draws in part from our recently published article, ‘Development of the Sisonke supervision mentoring programme’.²⁹

We begin by discussing the teaching presence, the first process in our LP. This presence, as defined by Garrison et al. and Garrison and Arbaugh, results from designing, facilitating and directing both the cognitive and social presences.^35,36 Within this teaching presence, Kreijns et al. suggest that a learner-centred approach is encouraged that emphasises ‘active learning, critical thinking, collaborative inquiry, problem-solving skills, communication skills, information handling skills, self-directed learning and connectedness with others’.³⁸ All of these are ‘twenty-first century skills and life-long learning competencies’.³⁸ The three components of this presence comprise: (1) instructional design and organisation (the setting of curricula and designing appropriate pedagogies); (2) facilitating discourse, which involves developing student-centred pedagogical approaches where student participation is valued; and (3) direct instruction, which includes summarising the learning, presenting the content and assigning tasks.

The LP was an intentionally designed online programme to capacitate supervisors to develop more efficient and effective ways of mentoring their postgraduate students.²⁹ The 12-week LP was developed using a bottom-up approach, in terms of which the mentees provided us with their supervisory needs. Weekly sessions began with 30 min of input by an established researcher and an expert in the topic concerned. The teaching proceeded via PowerPoint presentation, with little discussion. This initial experience was intended to provoke critical thinking and enhance problem-solving and information-handling skills. The class then split into breakaway groups, a process that characterise as ‘facilitating dialogue’.³⁵ The aim of these groups was collaborative inquiry, where many questions were asked and discussed, and many challenges and counter-challenges were offered. At the end of these discussions, one person reflected on the group’s learning, the final component in Garrison’s teaching presence, ‘direct instruction’.

Cognitive presence is the ability to construct and maintain meaning using continuous reflections along a continuum of four components: (1) a triggering event, when a problem area is identified that piques our interest in additional inquiry; (2) exploration, where the issue is further investigated; (3) integration, where the meanings achieved in the exploration stage are united and integrated; and (4) resolution, where the new knowledge is transferred to real-world applications.^36,39 Reflection is vital in the CoI framework as it assists participants to increase their cognitive presence by identifying their new knowledge and skills in a particular focus area.³⁶

In the Sisonke programme, the ‘triggering event’ was the decision to engage with an authentic problem: how can the UoT improve its postgraduate retention and throughput rates? After the 30-min input from an expert, the participants were randomly assigned to breakaway groups to further explore the topic. These group sessions involving discussion among mentors and mentees from all faculties and research units lasted for 45 min. The roles in the mentor and mentee relationship were framed by joint thinking and discovery rather than hierarchical knowledge provision.²⁹ It was in these discussions that new knowledge was co-created, with individual and group reflection generating countless learning opportunities under the rubric of Garrison’s component of ‘resolution’.

Richardson and Swan discovered that social presence motivates participants to learn more in social communities.⁴⁰ Garrison et al. have identified three phases in the manifestation of this presence: (1) emotional expression, when participants share their personal values and experiences; (2) open communication, when participants develop mutual awareness and recognition as supervisors; and (3) group cohesion, where participants develop, build and retain a sense of group community as supervisors of doctoral students.³⁵ Kreijns et al. have extended the original concept of social presence to include ‘social space’, which runs alongside social presence and is ‘centred around impression formation’, where group members develop ‘affective work relationships, share social identity, group cohesiveness, mutual trust, a sense of belonging, a sense of community and an open atmosphere’.³⁸ Participants are mutually dependent on each other for accomplishing the learning activities. Kreijns and Amelline and de Stafani observe that ‘social presence and social space are both progressive and developmental’.^38,41

Within the breakaway groups, we asked everyone to switch their Teams cameras on. This established social presence as a kind of glue holding the breakaway group together. The mentors and mentees shared their personal experiences of supervision in a safe space²⁹ conducive to frank discussion, relating to the ‘emotional expression’ and ‘open communication’ characteristic of the CoI. In this social space, the participants were able to share and build on each other’s knowledge and practice, with the focus on learning from each other.²⁹ Through group cohesion, they were learning together and growing as supervisors, gaining all the requisite competencies and skills. Although Kreijns et al. suggest that typically, groups move through five phases – forming, storming, norming, performing and adjourning – we did not experience the ‘storming’ phase, when there could be conflict as individuals vie for leadership positions.³⁸ After our breakaway group was formed, we started sharing our supervisory experiences and soon realised, despite being a mixture of novice and experienced researchers, that our sharing and learning were unfolding in a non-hierarchical way, with everyone contributing valuable information to create a vibrant transdisciplinary experience.²⁹ The structure of how our debates were to proceed was never made explicit; we fell into a routine where norms emerged naturally, and everyone felt safe to perform by discussing issues around their experience or need for experience of postgraduate supervision.

Ethical clearance for the study was obtained from the Faculty of Education Research Ethics Committee at the outset of the project (EFEC 1-5/202, extended till 30 August 2027). The ethical dimensions were noted because all the participants were academics. The 10 mentees were informed that participation in the online interviews implied informed consent; forms reflecting this were completed and collated. The invitation to participate included the ethics clearance document and the interview questions. Participants were informed that the data collected would be used for research purposes aimed at improving subsequent iterations of the programme. They were assured of their right to withdraw at any time and that participation was entirely voluntary. Participation in the weekly programme did not obligate participants to take part in summative interviews, and any request to exclude their data would have been honoured. However, no such requests were received. Confidentiality and anonymity were maintained throughout the research process, with no identifiers used; this adheres to customary research protocols and provisions for the protection of personal information under the South African Protection of Personal Information Act (POPIA). All the data was stored securely in the university research repository.

The Sisonke programme fostered a positive mentorship experience through social presence by means of open communication, group cohesion and personal and affective dimensions.

Foundational to fostering authentic interaction was the creation of a learning and sharing environment that allowed for risk-free expression among the participants. Hieker and Rushby note that when mentors are not in the mentees’ direct reporting line, a safe space for insight and honesty is offered.⁴⁸ This is in line with Sisonke’s collaborative approach to group mentors and mentees from various, unrelated faculties together. Participants consistently highlighted how the creation of a safe mentorship space encouraged meaningful dialogue and active engagement. As one participant noted:

This sense of reassurance was foundational for encouraging authentic and free interaction. The same mentee remarked that:

But the facilitation of a safe and supportive space allowed for vulnerability and genuine participation. For mentees:

And for mentors, it created the opportunity to:

Group cohesion emerged as pivotal, highlighting the importance of meaningful relationships and collaborative interactions. Group cohesion is the interpersonal bond that group members experience with one another and the collective entity, promoting group acceptance, support and trust.⁴⁹ Sisonke’s inclusive approach created a welcoming space where participants felt valued, while traditional power dynamics faded into the background. One participant noted:

Interestingly, participants could model what they learned in the programme, with one noting that:

This demonstrated that the diminishment of power differentials in the programme influenced their practice of supervision. The egalitarian environment cultivated a sense of belonging and collaboration. Reflecting on the experience, one participant noted:

The same participant added that:

The relationships among participants embodied affective learning through emotional engagement, often extending beyond the programme, as participants reported ongoing interaction:

Equally, the intentional use of cameras helped strengthen group cohesion and personal connections:

The human element was thus integral to the programme’s success, with many reflecting on how the programme revitalised their passion for mentorship and professional development. One participant stated:

Designed as a transformative initiative to enhance professional development and supervisory skills via an online platform, the Sisonke programme featured a thematic focus on cognitive presence. Cyclical progression among participants was evident through triggering, exploration, integration, and resolution,⁵⁰ as presented in the findings reported below.

Mentees who signed up for the Sisonke programme stepped out of their comfort zones to develop their supervision skills under the guidance of unfamiliar mentors in an unfamiliar setting. This induced feelings of puzzlement and uncertainty while at the same time motivating them to seek solutions and restore balance in their cognitive processes.⁵¹ One participant reflected on their initial apprehension when entering the programme in – for instance – the following way:

These perspectives highlight the significance of the role of mentors and peers in creating a supportive environment where cognitive discomfort and uncertainties can be overcome to enable participation.

Cognitive presence is demonstrated by the construction and confirmation of meaning through discourse, reflection and idea exploration.⁵² In this context, Sisonke facilitated active engagement and reflection, which led to an enriched and enthusiastic exchange of ideas. This investment in collective learning emphasised the importance of a collaborative environment in which participants could examine various supervisory strategies and best practices. The programme underscores the value of integrating shared knowledge into practice, with a participant reflecting that:

In this way, reflective learning became a cornerstone of participants’ supervisory approach. A participant noted:

According to the same participant:

These reflections highlight the reciprocal nature of the programme, in terms of which the integration of knowledge supports mutual growth and ongoing professional development.

The Sisonke discussion topics were carefully designed to be relevant and useful to emerging supervisors. The programme thus contributed to the development of mentees’ cognitive presence and, by way of resolution, encouraged them to apply new ideas to real-world contexts.⁵³ The practical application of skills was a significant outcome, as demonstrated by one participant who felt confident in their supervisory practice:

This sentiment was echoed:

These examples highlight how participants transitioned from reflective learning to actionable implementation in their professional contexts. Resolution was evident as a cognitive presence indicator.

The structured yet adaptive curriculum of the Sisonke mentoring programme exemplifies effective design and organisation. One participant appreciated how the course provided strategies to manage supervisory situations, remarking:

This reflection highlights the practical and anticipatory value of the programme’s structure. Participants noted that while the external framework was structured, internal sessions allowed for flexibility, which fostered deep engagement. According to one:

Another added:

The small-group discussions demonstrated how a flexible format complemented structured content delivery. The programme’s needs-driven design stood out. As one participant put it:

This bottom-up approach – emphasised by the same participant – reflects the responsive and participant-centred ethos of the programme:

Facilitating meaningful discourse was central to the Sisonke Supervision Mentoring Programme (SSMP) success. One participant noted the value of relationship management, remarking:

This points directly to the relational dynamics critical to effective supervision.

Trust emerged as a key element. As one participant reflected:

Another highlighted the impact of diverse perspectives, saying:

These comments reveal how discourse fosters confidence and enhances the supervisory experience.

Role modelling and targeted instruction emerged as powerful tools for resolving supervisory challenges. One participant remarked:

This demonstrates the actionable nature of the advice provided.

The mentorship approach also fostered a sense of connection. As one participant reflected:

While another expressed gratitude:

Such sentiments once again highlight the importance of creating a supportive environment where participants feel valued.