Leading innovation and professional development of doctoral supervisors-a case study of a multi-campus, large-scale, distributed course model

​The increased amount of doctoral students, the internationalisation and profesionalisation of doctoral supervision has demarcated a need for innovation and professional development of supervisors across campuses. The starting point of this chapter is a decision at a university board at a Norwegian multi-campus university (including ten campuses), stating that all supervisors (both main and co-supervisors) should hold a obligatory course in professional development for research supervisors. This ambition includes more than 600 main supervisors and several more co-supervisors. This paper follow the stages of development in the design of an innovative, distributed model meant to professionally develop the involved research supervisors: the planning, the implementation the development of this model, asking the following research question; Is it possible to lead professional development of research supervisors in a distributed, large-scale multi-campus model for research supervision? What can we learn, and what are the challenges and opportunities for professional development in such a model?