Supervising 13 students last semester was manageable. This September, I have 25.
Last semester, I introduced a spreadsheet-based tracking system that was entirely new to the students, and they found it surprisingly helpful. You can hear some of them talk about what that shift felt like on Structured Supervision vs Student Resistance: How Academic Discipline Transforms Research Thinking and Faridat Ajelara: From Correction Fatigue to Critical Research Thinking. It was simple, but for a cohort of 13, it was sufficient. It gave them structure. It gave them visibility. And it delivered results.
This September, I have 25.
The jump made the old system of spreadsheets, Telegram threads, scattered email chains, and ad-hoc notes impossible to sustain. Topic approvals were delayed. Meeting logs were incomplete. Students did not always know their current stage or next deadline. I did not always know who was stalled, who was quiet, and who was ahead.
That pressure is what pushed me to deploy the tech skills I have been building toward something practical: a Research Supervision Portal built with Google Apps Script and Google Sheets, designed specifically for how we actually supervise at LASU.
What It Covers
For students
Students get secure login via matric number and surname, direct topic proposal submission to the supervisor, detailed supervision session logging, an 11-stage research lifecycle roadmap, assigned learning resources and prerequisite videos, conditional approvals and supervisor sign-off inside the portal, and connections to individual and cohort Google Drive folders.
For the supervisor
The portal delivers a live dashboard with cohort KPIs, a searchable, filterable, sortable roster, a topic approval workflow with conditional approvals and explicit conditions emailed to students, detailed meeting log review with student-facing comments, and analytics showing stage funnel, meetings over the last six months, stage bottlenecks, meeting modes, and risk flags for quiet students, stalled students, and oldest pending proposals.
Across the system
There is dark mode, mobile-responsive design with an off-canvas navigation drawer, a Gemini-powered AI research assistant tailored to Journalism and Media Studies, Google Calendar booking links, toast notifications, paginated roster tables, and auto-assigned meeting numbers.
The front end is a standalone HTML layer; the back end runs in Google Apps Script, with Google Sheets as the single source of truth. No external database, no procurement cycle, no vendor dependency.
I am now preparing to pitch this for institution-wide deployment at LASU. The aim is not a personal workaround. It is a structured, scalable infrastructure that any department, any supervisor, and any student can use without installing anything new.
If you are in higher education and dealing with the same supervision logistics at scale, feel free to reach out. I am happy to share what I have learned.
Watch the walkthrough here:
#LASU #EdTech #HigherEducation #ResearchSupervision #GoogleAppsScript #DigitalTransformation #NigerianAcademia #AcademicInnovation