THESIS DEFENSE

Prof. Shamala Devi

2/3/2012
OUTLINE
• What is a thesis/ thesis defense (VIVA)?
• Why have a viva?
• Thesis examination process
• How is your Thesis judged?
• Tips for Preparing Thesis Defense
• Thesis Defense Tips
• Things to Remember about the Thesis Defense
• What to expect during the Defense
• After the viva
• Graduate School Requirements for Thesis Defense
 WHAT IS A THESIS
• Proposition that is offered by the candidate
• Advancement that has been made
• All leading to a debate to prove your proposition
• Claim something
– Accomplishments
– Clear
– Who cares about it
– obvious
• Must say something NEW
 What is a defense
• Oral presentation and Examination of
evidence for your thesis
• Presentation
– Answer your main hypothesis
– State capabilities
– Limits of your experiments
– Real world applications
– Any possible extensions
• Answer simple questions
WHAT IS A THESIS DEFENSE (VIVA)?
• Includes 2 components
– Seminars for Projects
• Formal Presentation of research topic and results
– Usually lasting no more than thirty minutes
• Seminars open to public
– Defense for Thesis
• Oral presentation & examination
• Purpose to test the candidate’s knowledge/ability
– Subject area
– Thinking in related areas
– Usually lasting no more than two hours
• Conducted by Thesis Committee
• Departmental Faculty may attend the defense
– The committee and audience may question the
candidate
WHY HAVE A VIVA?

Prove you
wrote it

Prove your
Prove you
research is
understand
PhD
it
standard
brainstorm

Test
Rite of knowledge
passage of the
wider field
 THESIS EXAMINATION PROCESS
• Intention to submit (including selection of
the examiners)
• Exact title submitted for approval
• Thesis submission together with the
form.
• Examiners independently assess your
thesis
• Pre-viva comparison of notes by
examiners
• Viva (a defence not an exam)
• Decision
HOW IS YOUR THESIS JUDGED?
 University regulations

 A doctoral thesis must exhibit

‘substantial evidence of originality’
and contain ‘material worthy of
publication’

 It is ‘a body of work which a capable,

well-qualified and diligent candidate,
who is properly supervised, can
produce in three years of full-time
study’.
TIPS FOR PREPARING THESIS
DEFENSE
HOW TO PREPARE A DEFENSE WITH
REDUCED STRESS
• Know what in side the defense
1 shoe box

2 • Know the format of your defense

• Know some specific suggestions

3 (how to prepare your Defense)
REMEMBER If your Supervisor has
approved the thesis as
"defensible," you will
almost certainly pass and
get your degree. Don't
worry about that! So what
is really at stake?
TIPS: DEFENSE PREPARATION
• Pray &Trust that God will be with you!
• Take a week off before your defense, if possible.
• Remember Nutrition, Exercise, Water, Sleep, Air,
Recreation
• Prepare your presentation slides at least a week before
defense
• Review your dissertation critically
TIPS: DEFENSE PREPARATION (CONTINUE)
• Go to several defences before your own.

• Plan your presentation to run about 10-15 minutes

– It's not a public lecture!
– Exam Committee has read your thesis
– they don't need or want an exhaustive description

• Contributions:
– Don't be modest
– be clear on your contributions!
– If someone asks, "Why should you get a degree?," how will
you justify yourself? "I've been here 2 years" won't cut it.
TIPS: DEFENSE PREPARATION (CONTINUE)
• Presentation preparation:

– Prepare a clear oral presentation with illustrative graphics and

enough information.
– Organize your oral presentation effectively and practice it
before your defense.
– Organize your presentation (Background State the problem
methodology  Results and conclusion)
– Make sure text is large enough to be readable
– Turn on slide numbering.
– Avoid using acronyms on the slides without defining them.
– Identify slides that you can afford to skip over if you see time is
getting tight. Don't assume you can talk forever.
– Think of some expected questions and prepare some extra
slides to answer them.
– Save often, keep multiple copies
TIPS: DEFENSE PREPARATION (CONTINUE)
• Presentation preparation:

– Highlight the strengths, explain them,

importance, relevance
– Be passionate
– Be yourself, let your personality shine
– Publications?
– Awards/conferences, patents etc
TIPS: DEFENSE PREPARATION (CONTINUE)
• Rehearsal
– Do a "dry run" with faculty and grad students from your
research group.
– Pay attention to their suggestions for improvement

• Set up
– Load presentation and test machine ahead of time (do not be
struggling with machine operation during the defense)
– Arrive early to set up
– Have transparencies and/or paper copies as a backup (in case
machine or power fails)
– Make sure you bring along a copy of your own thesis, since
numerous questions will take the form "On page 25, what did
you mean by...?
TIPS: DEFENSE PREPARATION (CONTINUE)
• You must represent yourself elegantly and gracefully on
thesis defense.
– Female Students: Female students should wear conventional
clothes suiting to an office environment on the day of thesis
defense. No high heels and jogging shoes.
– Male students: Male students should also wear formal clothes
suiting to an office environment on the day of thesis defense.
Jogging shoes are a no-no.
REMEMBER

IT IS YOUR THESIS!
TIPS: AT DEFENSE
• Everyone wants to look good
– You want to look smart
– your supervisor wants to be proud of you
– the examiners want to look insightful and thorough
– the department wants to maintain high standards.
– You should contribute to all of that, and not undermine it
• by being poorly prepared
• Disrespectful
• sloppily dressed,
• late arriving
• showing irritation or anger, and so on.

• Do not attempt to "pressurize" the examiners into giving you a break:

• "My plane is leaving on Monday"
• "My new job is starting tomorrow"
• Respect the integrity of the process, and take what the examiners dish out without
complaining.
TIPS: AT DEFENSE (CONTINUE)
• If you explain your work well and answer questions well, it
is less likely that many or major revisions will be
demanded. Be clear, speak slowly, be firm

• Taking a philosophical view

– whether the revisions are little or much trouble, they will
make your thesis a better document.
– Admittedly, it's possible that no one may ever read your thesis
again; but it's also likely that you or your supervisor will write
one or more articles based on your thesis.
TIPS: AT DEFENSE (CONT.)
• Examiners get annoyed when
– students don't understand their questions
– students don't answer them directly
– forcing them to repeat/reword
– students blab too much, using up the limited defence time.
• Pay careful attention to questions and try to answer what
is really asked!
• Don't look pleadingly at your supervisor(s) for help! It's
your thesis, not theirs.
• Don't worry about writing down everything needs to be
changed in your thesis. Your supervisor(s) will do this for
you.
REMEMBER "Defence" implies "ATTACK."
Expect to be attacked
But take a confident attitude
anyway
Probably you know more than
anyone in the room on your
particular topic
so don't feel frightened!
 WHAT TO EXPECT DURING THE DEFENSE
• Defense Questions typically are
about:
– The content of the thesis
– The claims made in the thesis
– clarification on a point
– reasoning or research further
• Questions are often friendly, but
may also challenge the
candidate's views, methods, or
conclusions
• Part of the evaluation is based
on how well the candidate can
defend his/her work.
 WHAT TO EXPECT DURING THE DEFENSE
• Defense Questions typically are about:
– Main claim? Main point, Main argument
– Which theory are you following, your own?, why
– Contribution to knowledge in the field
– What changes occurred over the period of your candidature
– What have you learnt
– Difficulties encountered, how you overcame them
– Which brought joy to you
– What would you do differently
– Are you going to continue
– What would be your next step or research project?
– Summarize in a few sentences
 WHAT TO EXPECT DURING THE DEFENSE
• It is acceptable to acknowledge :
– I don’t know
– I haven’t thought about it, but can speculate
– Don’t guess – not experienced enough to do this
– Decline politely
– Don’t ever bluff
• Think about possible questions
• Mock defense
• In your preparation put sticky notes
• Take your time to answer
WHAT TO EXPECT DURING THE DEFENSE
• Type of Questions

• Probing Questions
Thesis defense committee members would like you to
broaden its most controversial aspects.
• Curious
Thesis defense committee will like you give an overall view of
the field under study and your contribution to it.
• Hostile
Thesis defense committee will expose an area of
insufficiency.
 Self Preparation
• Overcome the fear inside – the jitters etc
• Manage this fear psychologically
• Natural response
• Defending in front of so-called EXPERTS

• Do you have reason to expect things to go wrong

• How prepared are you?
• Remember what failure means
• All humans fear – it is not the end of everything
• Final defense is actually against fear
TIPS: AFTER DEFENSE
• Plan to meet with your supervisor after the
examination to review requested changes
while it is fresh in his/her mind.
GRADUATE SCHOOL
REQUIREMENTS
FOR THESIS
DEFENSE
 CONCLUSION
• Contribution – always
• Dissertation is an exercise
• Demonstrates your capabilities in
conceptualizing, conducting and reporting
research
• Publications to be remembered by
• Real contribution
– Conferral of a degree
– Open up new careers
– Help you mature as a scholar
– Socializes you into the scholarly norms of your field
NO GUTS NO GLORY

QUESTIONS?