PhD Defense Guide
Where an online defense session starts
WebEx virtual rooms can facilitate the thesis defense, including its participants and their roles: Chair, candidate, and committee members. This concept is not new, it has been used for hybrid defenses, with some participants online and others in person, so we have lessons to draw on.
WebEx platform is a good platform to use for this type event, the Meeting rooms are easy to create, and share and invite uWaterloo as well as external people.
Preparations
Perhaps most important is effective communication between stakeholders.
- The local coordinator (Faculty or department) is key to communications.
- The coordinator should send a summary of the defense plans to:
- the supervisor
- committee members
- candidate
- external examiner
- IT support (UW and at any remote sites where the external examiner resides)
- In this summary these points should be ironed out:
- Date, actual time of event, supervisor’s name, students name, external examiner’s name, IT support personnel’s name
Next is to iron out the technical detail. Some of the suggestions apply even if you are not using the WebEX platform, but anything above this line is very important in order to keep on track.
Let us look at what the scenario is and how WebEx fits in.
The group of people are all online somewhere in the world, and while in attendance want to hold conversations in public or in private among themselves, to have Q&A, and see the presentation by student.
WebEx platform has:
Meetings is for holding meetings
Events is for offering webinars
Training is for having live classrooms
The best module for defense and examination sessions is WebEx Meetings. The following functions of WebEx Meeting room will serve a graduate exam well
- It provides two way audio and video, participants can mute or unmute their camera and mic
- The student can present their slides or documents
Note, given the nature of this event being online, some limitations exits and should be given some thought. I.e. annotation is not as natural(i.e maybe slides presentation should be such to minimize the need for annotation. Or, sharing animation and videos may not be as smooth for viewers
- WebEx has this nice function called Move to lobby and Admit. This is very useful for when the committee asks the candidate to leave the room so they can hold a private discussion, and then have the candidate re-enter by using Admit
- You can pass the presenter and host role as needed, and assign privileges as needed
- You can invite someone on add a new participant, or someone who is late for the meeting
- You can transfer files. (Not the recommended way to share anything significantly important during the session)
- You can add polls, share multimedia(this is the best way to share online videos)
Next step - Testing
An early test will prove invaluable in this process. Test what you think you are going to do on the day of event, and make a note what you did. On the day of event just execute what you tested.
Things to test and consider:
- Audio, video, presentation, and knowing the interface of WebEx.
- Bandwidth, test your audio when you are sharing a document, do an audio number count. I.e. each person counts 1 to 20
- During the test and the events day, ask others in household not use your shared internet connection for watching videos or playing network games.
- Make sure everyone knows what their role is and what they should do on the day of event. i.e. Is someone managing the session? Is that the host of Webex, or the supervisor, etc.
- Determine everyone’s role. I.e. who is the WebEx host, and who manages the session. Will there an IT person present during the session
- Make sure during this call you run only necessary applications to maximize performance of your computer. Make sure other people in the household are not using bandwidth heavy applications such as Netflix or online games.
Going over these steps and checking each one set you up with a code of practice that you should make note of and make sure everyone understands and notes.
On The day of event
The person with WebEx Host access right should start the advertised session at least 15-20min earlier, and as participants enter they should do a quick test as above to make sure everything is still in place according to the code of practice you established on the testing day.
The chair person starts the introduction according scheduled o fevent and directs the choreography and procedure of the event.
Notes:
- It is your choice if want to use video or just use audio during the defense session. If your bandwidth is showing some weakness, maybe turn off your videos.
- A good practice is after introduction everyone mutes their microphones except the speaker.
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