In defence of the viva voce: Eighteen candidates' voices

Davis, Géraldine; Engward, Hilary

doi:10.1016/j.nedt.2018.01.038

Cited by 12 publications

(20 citation statements)

References 20 publications

Supporting

Mentioning

Contrasting

Order By: Relevance

“…Students' perception of their doctoral defense is related to the behavior of the committee members during the defense. The choice of committee members, and their impact on all levels of the defense is highlighted in [18]. This study looked at candidates' perception of the defense through semi-structured interviews (n = 18).…”

Section: Students' Perception Of the Defensementioning

confidence: 99%

“…The questions on student perception were constructed based on a number of sources. First of all, questions regarding emotions were included because the emotional level of the defense was identified in the literature as an important element [16,18]. The studied emotions include nervousness before, during, and after the defense.…”

Section: Survey Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Based on the literature review and the difficulties students have in identifying the purpose of the defense [7], I included a multiple choice question on the perceived function of the defense as well as an open-ended questions where respondents could add their perceived functions of the defense. Given the importance of the committee on the experience of the doctoral candidates, I included a question about the perceived fairness of the committee based on [18] and added a question on the perceived suitability of the committee to make a well-balanced assessment of the doctoral candidate's work [35].…”

Section: Survey Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 2 more Smart Citations

Students’ Perception of Doctoral Defense Formats

Lantsoght¹

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The doctoral defense is an important step in the doctoral journey and an essential requirement for obtaining the doctoral degree. Past research on the doctoral defense has focused solely on national practices. In this work, I investigate the potential link between the doctoral defense format based on its major and minor elements and the perception of the defense by the student. For this purpose, I first reviewed the different defense formats used internationally to extract the different elements of the doctoral defense, as well as the literature on students’ perceptions of the doctoral defense. Then, I carried out an international survey which received 297 responses, of which 204 completed surveys which I used for the analysis in this article. I first analyzed the outcomes of the survey using qualitative and quantitative methods, and then cross-correlated the outcomes of defense format to the outcomes of student perception. From this analysis, I observe that the defense elements that positively impact the students’ perception are: publication of the thesis before the defense, receiving committee feedback before the defense, knowing the recommendation of one or more committee members in advance, having the supervisor present in the audience or as part of the committee, using a dress code, and including a laudatio. The final conclusion of this work is threefold. The first conclusion is that the details of the defense format impact most the students’ perception. The second conclusion is that doctoral students on average value the defense as a positive experience. The third conclusion is that the defense format cannot influence two important aspects of how a student perceives the defense: the student’s inner life and lived experience during the defense, and the behavior of the committee members.

show abstract

Section: Students' Perception Of the Defensementioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Survey Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

Section: Survey Designmentioning

confidence: 99%

See 1 more Smart Citation

Students’ Perception of Doctoral Defense Formats

Lantsoght¹

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Existing work on doctoral assessment is mostly limited to studying the viva voce in the United Kingdom [1][2][3][4][5][6][7][8], the assessment of the thesis in Australia [9], and the experience in New Zealand for non-native English speaking candidate [10]. Some work has also looked at the different formats used for the doctoral defense in European countries, in the light of potential pan-European standardization of the defense procedures [11][12][13][14][15][16][17][18][19][20].…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…Previous work indicated that the defense has three dimensions: the scholarly dimension, the emotional (affective) dimension, and the cultural dimension [5,10]. Most research on the doctoral defense in the past has focused on the scholarly dimension, and how the quality of doctoral research is assessed during the defense, as well as the relation between the evaluation of the written thesis and the evaluation of the oral defense [2,3,8,12,[21][22][23]. So far, work on the affective dimension is limited to evaluating students' perception of the defense [2,5,20,[24][25][26], with each of these studies focusing only on one defense format.…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

Students’ Perceptions of Doctoral Defense in relation to Socio-Demographic Characteristics

Lantsoght¹

2021

Preprint

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

The doctoral defense, which is an essential requirement for the doctoral degree, is considered to have three dimensions: the scholarly dimension, the emotional (affective) dimension, and the cultural dimension. In this work, I explore the link between sociodemographic factors and students’ perception of the doctoral defense. In particular, I focus on gender, ethnicity, and age at time of defense, as well as current position, and field of study. To address the influence of these aspects on the affective dimension of the doctoral defense, I first reviewed the literature on these socio-demographic aspects as well as the affective dimension of the defense. I then carried out an international survey on doctoral defenses, defense formats, and students’ perceptions and analyzed the 204 completed surveys for this study using quantitative and qualitative methods. The analysis included cross-correlations between students’ perceptions and the studied sociodemographic aspects. The main results of these analyses are that gender affects various aspects of the students’ perception of the doctoral defense and long-term perception, and that female candidates experience more issues with their committee. Ethnicity is important as well, although the participations of non-white respondents in this survey was limited. The influence of age at the defense is limited, and only for the youngest and oldest age groups I observe some differences in perception. There is no relation between current position and perception of the candidates during the defense. Finally, field of study is correlated for various aspects of student perception, committee issues, and long-term perception. The conclusion of this work is that socio-demographic aspects, and in particular gender, ethnicity, and field of study, influence how doctoral candidates experience their defense.

show abstract