Surviving Your Oral Presentation

Surviving Your Oral Presentation

This short review provides some useful guidance to surviving your oral presentation. It is drawn from the work of How to survive a thesis defence, Joe Wolfe , School of Physics
The University of New South Wales, Sydney, http://www.phys.unsw.edu.au/~jw/viva.html accessed 7 May 2007

Ø The panel is not seeking to attack or fail you.

o Students often expect questions to be difficult and attacking, and answer them accordingly. Generally, questions will be much simpler than you expect.

Ø Most questions will be sincere.

o The panel is likely to ask questions because they don’t know the answer and expect that the candidate will be able to rectify this.

Ø Be ready for a 'free kick'.

o It is relatively common that a panel will ask one (or more) questions that, invites to you to tell them (briefly) what is important, new and good in your proposal. Be prepared for an elevator talk. You should be able to produce a 3-5 minute overview which described what you are intending to do, why and how. Plus, any major limitation or ethical issues that you anticipate.

Ø Take your time.

o Let the panel finish the question

o A few seconds pause to reflect before answering seems eminently reasonable to the panel, but to the defender it seems like minutes of mute failure.

o The phrase "That's a good question" is very useful. It gives you time to think; it implies that you have understood the question and assessed it.

Ø If you don’t know the answer.

o Be honest. Don’t try to make it up as you go.

o Acknowledge that the question imposes a serious limitation on your proposal. Then go through the argument in detail – show the panel that you are serious about addressing any limitation or flaws in your proposal.

o See this as an opportunity to get some help. Ask the panel if they have any ideas on how to resolve the issue.

Ø Keep calm - and good luck!

Thanks Bruce