The founder of AfriScribe, Dr Olasunkanmi Arowolo, says AfriScribe Supervise, the project supervision product of the broader academic publishing and research support platform, is designed to tackle challenges in university research by promoting accountability, reducing paperwork and allowing students to change supervisors without restarting their projects.

Arowolo said the platform uses analytics and activity tracking to monitor interactions between students and supervisors, while allowing students to report concerns directly to their heads of department (HODs).

AfriScribe is an Africa-focused academic publishing and research support platform that provides digital tools and editorial services for researchers, universities and scholarly journals. AfriScribe Supervise focuses specifically on managing the project supervision process.

Addressing concerns about the relationship between lecturers and students, Arowolo said AfriScribe was designed to promote transparency and ensure both parties could be held accountable for their responsibilities.

“This platform ensures that there is a transparency that also monitors equity. You know, irrespective of supervisor-student relationship, we want there to be fairness, and we want students to be able to hold lecturers to account and lecturers to hold students to account.

“So, because of this, we are big on analytics, and the API is very strong. Universities have access to see everything that happens in the back end. They will know when a lecturer responds in time and when they don’t respond in time.

“And a recent feature that we just added is students can raise concerns, and such concerns can be sent directly on clicking of the button; it goes to the HOD. The HOD, upon institutional subscription, can now access the portal through their API service to validate the claim of the students to see if such allegations are true.”

He added that the platform provides institutions with analytics that can help them identify students who are struggling with particular stages of their projects and determine whether they need additional guidance.

Platform eliminates repeated printing

Arowolo said as part of its commitment to sustainability and environmental protection, AfriScribe Supervise eliminates repetitive printing during research corrections. According to him, this digital workflow reduces student expenses, cuts organisational paper costs, and creates a seamless feedback loop.

He further explained that students and supervisors could collaborate digitally through tools such as Google Workspace, using comments and suggested edits to communicate corrections without exchanging printed copies.

Similarly, students can also work on documents offline and synchronise their changes when they reconnect to the internet, while timestamps help track changes made to their work.

Arowolo said his most recent cohort of about 14 to 15 students did not need to print their research projects during supervision until the final binding and submission stage.

He added that digital collaboration allows supervisors to review students’ work and provide feedback at convenient times, while reducing the pressure associated with repeated face-to-face exchanges.

Students can change supervisors without restarting

The AfriScribe founder said the platform also allows institutions to reassign students to new supervisors when necessary without requiring them to start their research projects afresh.

He explained that when a student raises a complaint and the HOD recommends a change of supervisor, the institution’s administrator can reassign the student through the dashboard.

He also said that the system can consider the workload of a prospective supervisor when making a new allocation.

Additionally, he stated that the student’s existing research work moves with them to the new supervisor, allowing the project to continue from where it stopped.

According to him, this arrangement was intended to prevent delays when a supervisor becomes unavailable or when a change in supervision is considered necessary.

Platform adaptable across disciplines

On whether AfriScribe Supervise could accommodate different academic disciplines and research methods, Arowolo said its supervision stages could be adjusted to suit different research formats, including undergraduate, postgraduate and doctoral projects.

He explained that users could add or reduce stages depending on the nature of the research, while supervisors could attach learning resources to specific stages to guide students through tasks such as identifying research gaps, developing problem statements and citing sources.

“We are evolving and have built this based on the current knowledge that we have, and we are very open to improvement. But at the moment, this is adaptable; the stages are proposable. It has followed the standard format of project supervision for undergraduates, which is simulated even for postgraduates and as well for PhDs,” he said.

“And for PhD, I understand that some people go as much as, you know, going up to chapter 7, chapter 8 and more. It is; you can add more stages and propose it.”

Arowolo also disclosed that the company was planning virtual training programmes and could provide physical, on-site training for subscribing institutions, depending on their needs and arrangements.

He said the training would help students and supervisors familiarise themselves with the platform and make its adoption easier.

The founder disclosed that nine institutions were testing AfriScribe Supervise, including Anglia Ruskin University in the United Kingdom and Lagos State University, alongside other public and private tertiary institutions in Nigeria.

“We are also building a repository pipeline to make all successful projects accessible for users globally.” He said.