Last year I asked seven questions about the viva, got 302 responses to them, and used the results to start to get an idea of what the viva in the UK is like. I did this because I’m passionate about helping PhD candidates prepare for the viva, and I thought that I could: find out more information to help them…
Tag: viva research
Goals for 2015
On Monday I shared some of my highlights for 2014, but of course a New Year is not all about looking back, it’s about thinking and planning ahead too. I’ve written about setting objectives and goals before, so I’ll try and follow my own advice when it comes to thinking about my year ahead! Some of these are objectives, some…
Viva Experience Research, Part 5: Drawing Threads Together
So Far On Monday I introduced the research I set in motion earlier this year, a series of seven questions I asked PhD graduates about their viva experiences. On Tuesday and Wednesday I shared the basic quantitative results that I have found through analysing the responses I received, and yesterday I shared some of the qualitative responses that people gave,…
Viva Experience Research, Part 4: What People Say
“What three words come to mind when you think of your viva?” This question was the most challenging part of my research in to the viva to date, and also one of the most interesting. The quantitative answers that I found – explored in Tuesday’s and Wednesday’s posts – were interesting, and I think have a lot to offer people…
Viva Experience Research, Part 3: Forming An Outline
The Story So Far In yesterday’s post I shared some results from my survey about the length of vivas; the percentage of graduates that get minor corrections; the discovery that 20.9% of PhD graduates are told at the start of their viva that they have passed. These results get more interesting when we take into account research disciplines of respondents.…
Viva Experience Research, Part 2: Some Statistics
How long is the average viva? Top of my list of questions, I wanted to know how long vivas were. I added up all of the lengths and divided by the number of participants and arrived at 2 hours and 23 minutes. So now we know. Except… That’s not very helpful is it? We need to know how that relates…
Viva Experience Research, Part 1: Background
To Begin With My viva was four hours long, and I was stood in front of a chalkboard for the entire duration. Yeah: I know. After my PhD, I started work as a skills trainer with postgraduate researchers, and I began delivering sessions on viva preparation. I could tell people about my viva, and about other vivas I had heard…