The final milestone of our dissertation journey is our dissertation defense. Most of us must prepare some sort of presentation to defend what is likely the largest research project of our lives thus far. Are you wondering when you should start thinking of your defense? The answer is now!
In this blog post, I present a few tips to help you defend your defense successfully. First, I encourage you to start with the end in mind. Next, identify your potential audiences. Figure out the requirements and assemble your tools. Finally, visualize your success. As I discuss these tips, I describe my own sweaty defense experience, which happened on a conference call.
Start with the end in mind
Making choices with the end in mind at the beginning of our dissertation program can help us justify and defend our decisions when we get to the finish line.
Even if we are just starting our journey, it’s not too soon to start picturing how we will defend our choices. Why did we choose the topic? Why did we choose to study the topic in this place, with these subjects, using this theory and this method? What kinds of findings could we anticipate, and to what conclusions could they lead? What could practitioners do with our findings and conclusions?
When I was struggling to reach the milestones of my Ph.D. program—writing the concept paper and the dissertation proposal, collecting and analyzing the data, and writing the dissertation manuscript—it never occurred to me to think about the final milestone, my defense. In the last two months of my program, I was working on my manuscript and my defense simultaneously.
After so many years working alone, the thought of presenting my findings to a wider audience was intimidating. If I had kept the end in mind from the beginning, discussing my study with so little time to prepare wouldn’t have been so fraught.
Identify your audiences
We all know we should identify our audiences before we give our presentation, if we want to optimize our communication efforts. Toastmasters learn this. Teachers learn this, sometimes the hard way.
Few things are more embarrassing than going through our entire presentation, only to find out most of the audience had zero interest in the topic. I witnessed this error recently at a professional development workshop I attended on improving student engagement. The presenter assumed we were all traditional faculty, constrained by grades, attendance records, and bored students. Actually, we all taught in the community education program—no grades, no attendance sheets, and no bored students. If the presenter had asked a few simple questions up front, she would have probably chosen to shift the focus of her discussion to address our specific needs.
For dissertators, we know our committee will attend our defense. Will we have others in our audience? Dissertation defenses aren’t typically open to the public, but members of the academy are often welcome and invited to attend. That means other faculty, administrators, and fellow students might be present. Are they practitioners? Are they doctoral students wanting to learn from watching a peer?
At my school, all the defenses for the week appeared on the student portal. Anyone attending the university could download my PowerPoint file and dial into my defense conference call with the passcode. Knowing faceless strangers could listen in and comment gave me some nervous flutters.
At the time, I was certain of only two people on the line—my Chair and my committee member. I don’t know how many people were actually on the call. Only a few, I think, judging by the dead silence when my Chair asked if anyone had any questions for me. Later, a fellow dissertator emailed me to let me know she had dialed in silently to listen and learn.
This adventure occurred in 2013, before we all became old hands at muting ourselves on conference call lines. As the dissertator, I did not have access to the conference call moderator tools, and I’m not sure my Chair did, either. Her skill and ease with conference call technology seemed low. Still, we fumbled through the process. The call wasn’t dropped, even when she asked me to hang up and dial in again in five minutes to learn my fate. I assume all those silent lurkers on the call were present to the discussion regarding my merits, while I sweated in anticipation with my proctor, who was hopeful on my behalf, and my cat, who slept through the whole thing.
Learn the requirements and assemble your tools
What our actual defense will look like depends on our field and institution; however, most dissertators must meet certain requirements related to format and content. Designing the defense is an iterative process, much like writing the dissertation itself. We propose some designs and outlines and revise several times with our Committee members’ feedback. Designing the presentation depends on several factors.
Platform. Will your defense occur in person or virtually? The defense may take place in a classroom at your school, where your audience is in the room with you. Alternatively, the defense may happen in a virtual meeting space—for example, participants may dial into a telephone conference call, join a web conference on their computers or phones, or join using Skype, Wire, Facetime, Google Hangouts, or something similar.
You may be responsible for arranging the technology necessary to show your PowerPoint slides and be able to hear and see your committee reviewers; however, most institutions have the technology in place. For in-person presentations, most modern classrooms are equipped with computers, projectors, and screens. For a virtual defense, most institutions maintain conference call or web platforms and give participants the passcodes to join the defense space.
I earned my degree from an online university. Web platforms weren’t common in 2013. That means I defended my dissertation on a conference call in my apartment. It was an early December evening, dark and dreary. Other than my teacher-friend proctor, I was alone and invisible; my audience was faceless. As I spoke into my phone, I worried repeatedly that the call had been dropped, leaving me speaking to dead air.
According to a current student, the school has started using a web conferencing platform so dissertators can more easily present their slide decks; however, I don’t think video is involved, mainly because of the difficulties of showing participants’ faces in addition to the slides.
Asking participants to download and navigate web conference platforms can be problematic: Audience members’ expertise with different platforms will vary on a continuum from expert to incompetent. With a web conference platform, participants will hear the moderator (your Chair) and you; they may not be able to speak and be heard, though. Instead, they may have to “raise their hand” virtually to ask their questions. My guess is institutional leaders opt for the simplest method available that will accomplish the goal.
Format. Will you need a PowerPoint slide show? Most dissertators need some visual aids. Audiences are used to seeing information presented using PowerPoint or some other type of presentation software. Using the slides, we walk our audience through the main points of our study.
Take a look at my PowerPoint. This is a pdf file.
I’m relatively skilled at PowerPoint, so that part wasn’t too scary. My challenge was adapting my design style to the color constraints of the university’s PowerPoint template. I show a sample slide from my PowerPoint below.
The main pitfall for most presenters is overloading the slides with information. Simple bullet points work best. Fill in the details verbally. I used photos and images from my findings. (Some of the data I collected consisted of “rich pictures,” perfect for presenting visually with PowerPoint.)
Timing. How much time will you have to present? My Chair’s main concern was that I not talk too long. I had a maximum of thirty minutes to present, and twenty-five minutes, she said, was better.
To adhere to that agenda, I wrote out my script for each slide and recorded myself reading my script, timing each section. I averaged about a minute per slide. Some slides held more information, some less. Including the title slide and the closing slide showing the few sources cited in the presentation, I presented twenty-six slides in twenty-five minutes.
What happens if you exceed the time allotted? To scare me, my Chair told me stories of reviewers who cut off dissertators mid-sentence because they lollygagged through their slides. I understand: The reviewers need time to ask us questions. Sharing our research findings in a fancy slide show is fun, but the point of the defense is to defend our study to our reviewers.
Photos. My dissertation happened to include visual data, which was perfect for a slide show. I incorporated other photos as well, to break up the bullet points and give the viewers something to look at while they listened to me talk.
Outline. The content of the slides typically follow the outline of the dissertation itself. Your outline will vary depending on your field and institution. My dissertation was a traditional five chapter document, consisting of Introduction, Literature Review, Methodology, Findings, and Conclusions. My slide outline closely mirrored those elements.
Questions. My Chair gave me a list of typical questions I might be asked. I Googled defense questions to see what was floating out there in the zeitgeist. That was intimidating. In addition, I dialed into a dissertator’s defense to get a feel for the process and visualize my own experience. I wrote out answers to what I imagined would be the most common defense questions.
I did not record my actual defense, although it’s possible the conference call software did “for quality assurance purposes.” Or not. I don’t have a recollection now of what my Chair and committee member asked me, other than the question I flubbed: “Tell us in one sentence what your study was about.” I couldn’t do it in one sentence under pressure. Other questions I prepared to answer included:
- What was most challenging?
- How generalizable are your findings?
- What will you do with the findings to make a difference?
- What advice would you give a student who is starting the dissertation process and considering using the methodology you used?
- If you had to do it over, what would you change?
Practice your presentation
I didn’t automate the slides because on the conference call platform, the participants in the call were viewing a downloaded version of the PowerPoint on their own computers. I verbally told them when to advance to the next slide, but I had no control over their ability to follow my direction. As I mentioned, I wrote out my script and recorded myself to get a sense of the timing and pacing.
Listening to recordings of our own presentations can be humbling, but this step is so helpful, once we get over our distaste at hearing our own voices. I’m not enamored with the sound of my own voice, but I learned long ago to get over myself and focus on communicating my message to the audience.
Finally, visualize success
Olympic athletes employ visualization and imagery to prepare for success. Dissertators can do the same thing. What does success look like for you? If you followed the tips in this blog post, you have a good sense of what to expect and how to prepare for your defense. The final step is to imagine defending successfully without melting down in a panic attack or throwing up behind the lectern.
Visualize yourself in the setting, performing effectively, receiving approval, and earning your degree. Practice this mental exercise daily. Conjure as much detail as you can. If you have access to the classroom or auditorium where your in-person defense will occur, stand on the stage or podium. Practice delivering your presentation, using your visual aids.
If you are defending in the virtual space, download the web conference software ahead of time, make sure you have all updates installed, and open the platform to see how it works. Sit in on other defenses and imagine it’s you clicking the slides, describing your study, and fielding questions.
Summary
No matter where we are in our dissertation journey, it’s never too soon to plan for our dissertation defense. Begin with the end in mind, do your homework, and visualize success. Then get a good night’s sleep, show up, and do your best. You got this! No one knows your study better than you.
