{"id":4944,"date":"2013-01-10T11:50:07","date_gmt":"2013-01-10T11:50:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/meeseeks:5080\/blog\/?p=4944"},"modified":"2013-01-10T11:50:07","modified_gmt":"2013-01-10T11:50:07","slug":"phd-vivas","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/2013\/01\/phd-vivas\/","title":{"rendered":"PhD Vivas"},"content":{"rendered":"

Awhile back, I posted some advice from my own experiences on doing a PhD<\/a>.\u00a0 Since then, several people have asked me for advice about the viva voce<\/em> (or oral) examination, which most PhD programs require at the end of the degree.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Here are some notes I wrote for a candidate recently.
\nIt is helpful to think about the goals of the examiners.\u00a0\u00a0 In my opinion, they are trying to achieve the following goals:
\n1. First, they simply want to understand what your dissertation says.\u00a0\u00a0 This means they will usually ask you to clarify or explain things which are not clear to them.
\n2.\u00a0 Then, they want to understand the context of the work.\u00a0 This refers to the previous academic literature on the subject or on related subjects, so they will generally ask about that literature.\u00a0 They may consider some topic to be related to your work which you did not cover; in that case, you would normally be asked to add some text on that topic.
\n3.\u00a0 They want to assess if the work makes a contribution to the related literature.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 So they will ask what is new or original in your dissertation, and why it is different from the past work of others.\u00a0 They will also want to be able to separate what is original from what came before (which is sometimes hard to do in some dissertations, due to the writing style of the candidate or the structure of the document).\u00a0\u00a0 To the extent that Computer Science is an engineering discipline, and thus involves design, originality is usually not\u00a0a problem:\u00a0 few other people will be working in the same area as you, and none of them would have made precisely the same sequences of design choices in the same order for the same reasons as you did.
\n4.\u00a0 They will usually want to assess if the new parts in the dissertation are significant or important.\u00a0 They will ask you about the strengths and weaknesses of your research, relative to the past work of others.\u00a0\u00a0 They will usually ask about\u00a0potential future work, the new questions that arise from your work, or the research that your work or your techniques make possible.\u00a0 Research or research techniques which open up new research vistas or new application domains are usually looked upon favourably.
\n5.\u00a0 Goals #3 and #4 will help the examiners\u00a0decide if the written dissertation is worth receiving a PhD award, since most university regulations require PhD\u00a0dissertations\u00a0to present an original and significant contribution to knowledge.
\n6.\u00a0 The examiners\u00a0will also want to assess if YOU yourself wrote the document.\u00a0 They will therefore ask you about the document, what your definitions are, where things are, why you have done certain things and not others, why you have made certain design choices and not others,\u00a0 etc.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Some examiners will even give the impression that they have not read your dissertation, precisely to find out if you have!
\n7.\u00a0 Every dissertation makes some claims (your “theses”).\u00a0 The examiners\u00a0will generally approach these claims with great scepticism, questioning and challenging you, contesting your\u00a0responses and arguments, and generally trying to argue you down.\u00a0\u00a0 They want to see if you can argue in favour of your claims, to see if you are able to justify and support your claims, and how you handle criticism.\u00a0\u00a0 After all, if\u00a0you can’t support your claims, no one else will, since you are the one proposing them.
\nThe viva is not a test of memory, so you can take a copy of your thesis with you and refer to it as you wish.\u00a0 Likewise, you can take any notes you want.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 The viva is also not\u00a0a test of speed-thinking, so you can take your time to answer questions or to respond to comments.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 You can ask the examiners to explain\u00a0any question or any comment which you don’t understand.\u00a0\u00a0 It is OK to argue with the examiners (in some sense, it is expected), but not to get personal in argument or to lose your temper.
\nThe\u00a0viva is one of the few\u00a0occasions in a research career when you can have an extended discussion about your research with people\u00a0interested in the topic who have actually read your work.\u00a0\u00a0 Look forward to it, and enjoy it!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Awhile back, I posted some advice from my own experiences on doing a PhD.\u00a0 Since then, several people have asked me for advice about the viva voce (or oral) examination, which most PhD programs require at the end of the degree.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 Here are some notes I wrote for a candidate recently. It is helpful to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[13,74],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-4944","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-computer-science","category-science","p1","y2013","m01","d10","h11"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4944","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=4944"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/4944\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=4944"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=4944"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/vukutu.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=4944"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}