How to Prepare For Your Dissertation Defence? A Step By Step Guide for PhD Students
If you are about to complete your doctoral degree, you will most likely hear the term ‘dissertation defence’. This formal presentation is an essential requirement for earning your PhD degree. Once you have completed the writing process, the next essential step is to present and justify your dissertation to the program committee successfully.
A dissertation defence meeting consists of a committee which consists of two or more professors in the program of the candidate. It may also include people or professionals from other colleges or other fields. The main purpose of a thesis or dissertation defence is for the present committee to see that you actually understand your research work and the focus area.
In this article, we will discuss how you can practise excelling at the PhD dissertation defence. Also, we have listed down some interesting tips to prepare for the entire defence process.
Let’s dive deeper into the details.
What Is a PhD Dissertation Defence?
The doctoral final oral exam, also called the dissertation defence, is the final formal step before you submit the manuscript. According to the University of New Mexico, it is important for the doctoral degree to be awarded to you. Furthermore, the focus of the PhD dissertation defence is on the dissertation and its relationship to the field of study of the candidate.
However, most students find it complicated to summarise their dissertation work in just a few slides. So, if you also feel the same and need any sort of help with the preparation of the thesis defence, you can contact the PhD dissertation writing services. Acquiring support from such sources is worthwhile because such writers have experience in crafting the slides and papers for the defence of the dissertations.
A Step-by-Step Guide on How to Prepare for Your PhD Dissertation Defence
When you reach the dissertation defence stage, you will already have done all the research work and crafted your doctoral dissertation. At this point, you just have to present a summary of the entire research work in front of the committee. It is not that intimidating, but PhD students find it tough to prepare for their dissertation defence.
We have the best tips to follow for the preparation of your PhD dissertation defence presentation that can help students feel confident.
Let’s dive deeper into the details.
1. Begin Your Preparation Early
For preparing your PhD dissertation defence, you shouldn’t wait until you have completed the research objectives. Instead, you should start your preparation well in advance. Also, you should ensure that you understand all the intricacies of your research process. Furthermore, make an effort to know the reasons and methods for the research experiments that you have conducted.
2. Attend Other Presentation Sessions
Look out for the other open doctoral defence presentations at your university. In fact, you can also choose to attend the presentation sessions at other universities. Firstly, it will help you see that the thesis defence process is not an intimidating process. Secondly, it can make you effortlessly learn different hacks to defend your research work. Thirdly, you will also be able to understand why the PhD dissertation defence is important for the research and scientific community.
3. Prepare The Slides Well
You must not forget that the doctoral dissertation defence process is going to be harder than submitting the thesis on time. It is because of the fact that you will be expected to present the extensive research process in a limited time. That’s why the PhD dissertation defence slides should always be made in a well-thought-out manner for success. Also, getting the right data for the slides and creating a logical flow to your presentation must be your top priority.
4. Pay Attention to the Structure
While you are designing the PhD dissertation defence slides, be mindful not to be haphazard in presenting the information. In fact, you should take your time to create a well-structured presentation. It will be great to create high-quality slides which will be used to impress the committee members. Keep in mind that your slides should be able to grab the attention of the audience. Needless to say, the information must also be accurate and thorough.
5. Make Your List Of Questions
While preparing for the PhD dissertation defence, keep in mind to make a note of the questions that you have to ask the readers. Also, you can try approaching the questions from the reader’s perspective. For that, you will also have to pretend that you have no idea about the topic and then formulate the questions that are helpful for the readers to understand your work better. If you need further support, you can read finish your PhD dissertation faster.
6. Practice the Body Language
After the successful preparation of the slides, you should start focusing on the body language. Pay attention to how you will look while defending your dissertation. The exercise is not for appearance only, but for practising to relax your body whenever needed. Also, the correct posture will give you a feeling of immense self-confidence. The best thing to do here will be to observe yourself in the mirror and pay attention to your movements.
7. Practice Answering the Questions
When you practice answering the questions for the PhD dissertation defence, you will understand better how to handle your audience. Also, pay attention to the first impression you will make on the audience. Keep in mind that your preparation, practice and posture will set the tone for your entire presentation. Furthermore, the grasp of the concepts and knowing the answers to the probable questions increases your chances of success in front of the committee.
8. Visualise Yourself Defending the Thesis
This simple practice of visualising yourself while defending the doctoral degree will have an immense effect on your confidence. Every day till the day of your PhD dissertation defence, practise the entire session in front of the mirror. See yourself standing in front of the imaginary audience and explain all the points. Since this exercise is going to take a lot of persistence, stick to it and know that the final results will be worth it.
How to Successfully Defend Your Final PhD Dissertation ? 12 Best Tips
It’s normal for students to feel confused when it comes to the explanation of their research work to an audience in a dissertation defence session. To do better in this regard, your presentation must be structured and well-prepared. The most commonly followed format for defending a dissertation is mentioned here:
● The presentation of a research study in the form of a presentation
● Answering the queries asked by your dissertation committee
● Getting feedback from the members of the dissertation committee
Let’s now explore the 12 best tips for the defence of a PhD thesis.
1. Expect Tough Questions and Prepare for Them
When starting with the preparation for a dissertation defence session, anticipate at least 10 questions that will be asked of you. Keep the answers to such expected questions ready in your head. Rehearse those 3-4 times to feel better about your preparation status.
Obviously, you cannot predict every comment or question that will come up during the defence. However, you can still keep yourself ready to answer some of the potential challenges.
Some tips that make you prepared for the toughness of the dissertation defence are the following:
1. Get used to the research landscape.
2. Know the interests of the dissertation committee members.
3. View the research work from different perspectives.
4. Dedicate enough time to craft thoughtful answers to different research questions.
2. Keep a Backup Ready
Relying too much on technology can result in probable negative circumstances for you. Technology is unpredictable, and there is no guarantee that your presentation will work well on the big screen. So, to avoid getting into an unpleasant situation, you should have a plan B for these situations.
Here are a few steps that you can take to make sure that things do not go wrong at the last minute:
1. Keep the handouts printed (ready for distribution) in case the technology fails to work.
2. Run the presentation on a projector to see if it’s working well or not.
3. Rehearse the entire reading/delivering the presentation so that you don’t get confused at the final moment.
4. Keep an additional neat shirt ready to wear in case you spill something while eating or drinking.
3. Take Your Dress Seriously
Since your dissertation defence is a formal event, the entire university may be invited to join the session. While most institutes do not have certain rules for how to dress for that defence session, you should choose formal attire for the event.
Men: They should dress as if they have to attend a job interview or as if they have to present papers at a conference.
Women: For women, it can be a combination of dark-coloured formal suits, a button-up shirt and dress pants and professional dresses.
The clothes you wear should be neatly ironed and must be free from all kinds of wrinkles. Keep in mind that you have to look professional while formally defending your SBU research work.
4. Ask for the Supervisor’s Help
Your committee members and dissertation advisor are the best people you can consult to solve defence-related issues. If you can entrust a person with smaller but rather important details of your dissertation defence ahead of schedule, it will relieve your stress. You can entrust the person with the following responsibilities:
1. The preparation of the room for the day of the dissertation defence
2. The setting up of equipment for the presentation
3. Preparation and distribution of handouts
Apart from these things, you can also ask them to help you with the questions of the dissertation defence. Since the committee members must have attended a lot of such events, they can manage to guide you through the process thoroughly.
5. Manage Anxiety and Nerves
At this point, you already know so well what’s coming, and you have almost prepared yourself, so why are you still nervous? Well, fret not, because getting anxious or nervous before the PhD dissertation defence is really normal for students.
According to a study titled The Multiple Mediating Roles of Thesis Writing and Anxiety, out of 910 graduate students, 7.5% feel depressed, and 4.2% of them show signs of anxiety under the heavy pressure of research.
There are a few ways to manage an overwhelming feeling of anxiety when defending a PhD dissertation. Some points from the A. The James Clark School of Engineering are listed here:
1. Study before the PhD thesis defence as much as you can.
2. Meditate to relax and calm your nerves.
3. Mimic the entire presentation and oral defence process.
4. Dedicate enough to practising the dissertation defence session.
6. De-Stress Yourself
You will be nervous. And that’s okay. The examiners expect you to be nervous when you stand on the stage to defend your PhD dissertation. It’s a show they have seen countless times. All that you have to remember is that they are NOT there to get you. Hence, you should be well-prepared and keep all the anxiety at bay.
There are certain ways which assist people in relieving stress and minimising feelings of anxiety. According to MD Anderson Cancer Centre, here are the 6 best yet quick hacks to manage the nervousness:
1. Try consciously controlling your breathing pattern by doing diaphragmatic breathing.
2. Release the tension in your body by doing simple stretches.
3. Describe your feelings verbally and talk to your friends or fellow colleagues.
4. Try guided imagery to induce feelings of calm and safety inside you.
5. Listen to music as a distraction for a short while.
6. Have a monologue in your native language with your own self.
7. Pick the Ideas for Illustration
As per the University of Chicago, the doctoral thesis defence will last for about two hours and can be open to the public. In these 2 hours, you can talk about each and every idea that you have discussed in your papers. That is why you should pick the most important ideas for the illustration on the presentation slides. Along with this, you have to decide beforehand what aspects of research you want to present virtually.
Image Credits: Beautiful.AI
The following slides must be present in the thesis defence presentation you have to make:
● A slide for the title page having all the information about the research work and institution
● The introduction slide presents an overview of the research
● A literature review slide presenting the relevant theories and research work
● The methodology slide shows the research methods used to get results
● The slide for results, which mentions the findings of your anti-microbial chemistry thesis
● A conclusion slide describing the key research ideas and suggestions for future work
Apart from these, you can choose to pick other ideas for slides which may appear to the audience of your thesis defence session.
8. Define the Theme of Your Presentation
The theme of your PhD dissertation presentation should be quite professional in nature. It also must have a cohesive design. You can pick what kind of colour schemes and typography can support the topic of your thesis in the best way.
The best thing to do here to ensure consistency is to pick a theme from the PowerPoint and create all the slides in a single fashion. You must have consistency in the following elements of your presentation:
● Colour palette
● Margins
● Footers
● Typography
● Logos
● Transitions
Apart from all of this, the specifications of the design for the entire defence presentation must be similar in nature. It will leave a strong impact on the minds of readers.
9. Make Focused and Simple Slides
You must have a lot of information to present in the defence presentation of your Phd thesis. You might even have to show the working of experiments you conducted, but when it comes to presentation, less is more.
Ensure that all the slides focus on the main and key points of your work. Here are the guidelines, as per Harvard Business Review, that you can follow for crafting a killer presentation for defence:
● Make simple slides and avoid using jargon.
● Don’t quote too much from your thesis.
● Do not add haphazard data to your presentation slides.
● Be consistent with the styling of slides.
No matter how much information you have to present, keep your slides focused and simple. No one is going to have enough time to go through the cluttered slides that have too many details. The rule of thumb is not to add more than two ideas on a single slide.
Image Credits: Slide Egg
The picture above is taken from Slide Egg and shows what a clean and arranged thesis slide looks like. Your thesis slides should also look like this one.
10. Structure the Presentation
Each of the presentations for the PhD thesis defence is different, but the general structure is the same. It will start from an introductory slide and will move towards the conclusion of your paper.
The slides must have the same sequence as the chapters mentioned in the original PhD dissertation. Furthermore, you must keep yourself prepared for the questions that will be asked of you. Here is how you can manage the requirements of this section:
● Follow the same sequence of chapters as in the original thesis.
● Read through the thesis and make a list of probable questions.
● Review the academic expertise of the academic panel members.
● Analyse what areas of your work may be appealing to the readers.
Once you figure out all the information, it is time to add content to the slides of your PhD dissertation defence presentation. All the data that you add must be structured in its nature. You should also be confident about all the information that you display on the slides.
11. Include the Data Visualisations
The entire point of crafting a PhD dissertation defence presentation is to illustrate the key arguments of your work. The minds of humans react strongly to the imagery; we are all visual creatures. You should illustrate the results you get in the form of engaging and appealing infographics, charts and more.
The methods best used for the presentation of data, as per Veritis, in the visual form in the content of a thesis, are the following:
● Infographics
● Area charts
● Histograms
● Waterfall charts
● Pie charts
● Heat maps
● Maps
● Bar charts
● Box and Whisker plots
● Scatter plots
● Gantt charts
However, students need to get help from tools to present the dissertation content in an appealing manner. The best 10 tools that you can use for data visualisation in your PhD thesis defence are mentioned here:
● Grafana
● Chart.js
● Tableau
● Infogram
● ChartBlocks
● Datawrapper
● D3.js
● Google Charts
● FusionCharts
● Chartist.js
Image Credits: Veritis
12. Practice the Defence Session
After spending months researching your PhD dissertation, summarising all the results in a few slides might dismay you. You may hate to see all your hard work being presented in the form of some slides, but keep in mind that the delivery of that summarised content matters a lot.
The rule of thumb is to practice, practice and practice the thesis defence until you know it like the back of your hand. You cannot impress an academic panel if you have to read the presentation from the notes. Here is what you can do in this regard:
● Know the content of all slides.
● Know what parts of the thesis you have to present in the thesis.
● Practice the delivery of your work beforehand.
Things You Must Take With You
When it’s time to leave for the PhD dissertation defence, you should keep your nerves calm and composed. During the preparation session, make a list of things that you might need during the dissertation defence session. Here are some things that you must take with you when leaving to defend your doctoral dissertations:
● The entire dissertation can be annotated for your own ease
● A list of research questions that you can be asked and your planned answers
● Any questions that you may have in your mind for the readers
● Some helpful notes that you may have made during the revision of your research
● The list of minute corrections that you might have to make during the revision session
Apart from these, you can also have other things on the list which you may want to take with you. Keep some candies and chewing gum handy, and keep yourself relaxed before you start the dissertation defence. Have faith in yourself – you will do it!
What Is The Best Way To Prepare For a Dissertation Defence?
Preparation is always going to be the key. Here’s how you can prepare for your dissertation defence in a more effective way:
1. Know your dissertation inside out. For that, you can re-read it multiple times.
2. Do not make the mistake of thinking about potential critiques and preparing responses.
3. Practice your presentation. Rehearsing with peers or mentors and timing yourself can be quite helpful for you.
4. Understanding your methodology and contributions shall also be best. It is important to make sure that you are clear about your research.
5. Review related literature and make a list of expected questions on foundational and contemporary studies.
6. Do not panic; stay confident and calm. You must maintain a professional attitude and composure while you are delivering your PhD dissertation defence presentation.
How Long Does a PhD Thesis Defence Take?
As per the Division of the Humanities at the University of Chicago, the PhD defence generally lasts 2 hours only. It is open to the public, and the defence process aims to accomplish two main goals. Firstly, it provides an occasion for the presentation of completed doctoral work. Secondly, it will furnish the chance for the evaluation of the research work you have done.
Do You Get a PhD After Defence?
After you have defended the dissertation and made the final revisions, it will be time to complete your paperwork and upload the final documents. The PhD holders, after their dissertation defence, can be called Doctors.
Conclusion
The bottom line is that on the final day of your dissertation defence, you should try to keep a clear mind and be calm. Before you reply to a PhD dissertation defence question, think through it. It is completely okay to ask your teachers to repeat their questions; you can even take a few seconds before you respond.
Know that you will never be expected to know everything in advance. So, if you need personalised assistance, you can consult custom dissertation writing firms in the UK to prepare for the defence session. Their professional writers are trained enough to provide you with a list of probable questions that can be asked of you.
Lastly, take the preparation for the viva seriously and ensure to devote substantial time to it. Making a viva preparation checklist and following it when working on the PhD dissertation defence is the best thing that you can do.
Author Bio
Alex Morgan is a dedicated dissertation writer who has been helping students confidently defend their dissertations for the past 9 years. With a decade of experience in higher education, he guides students on structuring their thesis defence and handling the questions of the committee. When he is not working, he can be found reading research journals of different kinds.
