reflection

Your Excellent Thesis

It’s not realistic to expect your thesis to be perfect, but it’s important not to think that your thesis is just “OK.”

“You’ve produced an average account of your satisfactory research.”

No! Start by considering what’s excellent about your thesis!

  • What are the best parts?
  • What are you proud of?
  • What really makes a difference?
  • What stands out?
  • How could someone be inspired by your research?
  • What do you love about your research?

Make some notes for yourself. Don’t forget. What’s excellent?

A SMART Review

From time to time I’ve shared an acronym I like on this blog. I’ve talked about SMART before: a useful tool to help with planning, it stands for Specific, Measurable, Advantages, Realistic, Time-bound – the five qualities of an effective goal. It struck me a few weeks ago that these words could also be a nice prompt for reflecting on your research at the end of the PhD:

  • Specific: how would you define what you’ve done in your research?
  • Measurable: how can you be certain of what you’ve achieved?
  • Advantages: how does your work make a contribution?
  • Realistic: how does your work compare to what you were originally planning?
  • Time-bound: how did your research change over the course of your PhD?

Five simple points to reflect on your research before the viva. Making notes on each of these points could make a nice summary of your work for viva prep.

New Resource: 7776 Mini-Vivas

I’ve wanted to make a viva-related game for a long time, but whenever I get close to an idea it always slides away while I’m thinking about it.

This is the closest I’ve got: a game-like resource for one or more people to help reflect on research and the thesis in advance of the viva.

Introduction

Want to have a Mini-Viva? That’s what I’m calling a short reflection on your research or practice for the viva using useful questions.

There are two main sections to this resource: The Questions and Ways To Play. I’ve organised five lists of six questions. All are either typical of questions that come up in vivas, or useful to reflect on in advance of the viva. The basic idea is to take one question from each list to create a Mini-Viva.

You could use a standard six-sided die or pick a number from 1 to 6 to choose from the lists in The Questions. I’ve included five Ways To Play, ideas on how to use this resource both by yourself and with other people. With five sets of questions and six choices for each there are 7776 Mini-Vivas possible – perhaps don’t do all of them during your preparations!

I hope you find this useful! Scroll to the end for some Final Thoughts on this resource.

The Questions

Question 1

  1. How would you define your thesis contribution?
  2. What are the three brightest parts of your research?
  3. Where did your research ideas come from?
  4. Why does your thesis contribution matter?
  5. What is your main research question?
  6. Why did you want to pursue your research?

Question 2

  1. How would you describe your methodology?
  2. How do you know that your methodology is valid?
  3. What influenced your methodology?
  4. Where did you find support in the existing research for your methods?
  5. How did your process change as you did your PhD?
  6. What did you learn about doing research?

Question 3

  1. What are the core papers that have guided you?
  2. How did your supervisor help shape your research?
  3. How does your work build on prior research?
  4. How is your work related to your examiners’ research?
  5. How did the existing literature in the field influence you?
  6. What were some of the challenges you overcame during your PhD?

Question 4

  1. How can you be sure of your conclusions?
  2. What are your main conclusions?
  3. Are there ways that your results differ from previous ideas?
  4. How would you summarise your main results?
  5. What comments or questions have you been asked about your work previously?
  6. What questions would you like to ask your examiners?

Question 5

  1. How could you develop this work further in the future?
  2. What do you hope others will take away from your thesis?
  3. What’s the impact of your work?
  4. What publications do you hope to produce?
  5. What are you taking away from your PhD?
  6. If you could start again, knowing what you know now, what would you keep the same?

Ways To Play

Solo, Pencil & Paper: Divide a sheet of paper into five sections. Roll a 6-sided die for each question or choose one that feels appropriate. Write each question into their appropriate space. Spend some time reflecting on each and then writing notes into each space.

Solo, Record & Reflect: Use an audio recording app or software to record your answers. Roll a 6-sided die for each question as you make the recording, so the question isn’t completely expected, or simply choose as you go. Spend as much time as you like answering each question. Leave the recording for a day or two, then listen back to it and reflect on your responses. See what you think about them now.

With A Little Help, Scripted: Divide a sheet of paper into five sections. Roll a 6-sided die for each question or choose one that feels appropriate. Write each question into their appropriate space. Give this to a friend to ask you the questions; ask them to make notes in each space. Afterwards have a chat about what you each think of the experience.

With A Little Help, Unscripted: Give the question list to a friend. Ask them to roll a 6-sided die for each question or choose one that feels appropriate, without consulting you. Talk with them for each question they choose to ask you. Ask them to make notes if they’re happy. Afterwards have a chat about what you each think of the experience.

With A Little Help, Freeform: Give the question list to a friend. Ask them to use the questions to steer a reflective conversation with the goal of helping you think and talk about your thesis research. Ask them to make notes if they’re happy; you might benefit from making notes as well. Afterwards have a chat about what you each think of the experience.

Final Thoughts

7776 Mini-Vivas is a work-in-progress, albeit one that I’m happy to share and for it to be shared. I think there’s a nice structure underneath this for short, useful practice and viva prep. Perhaps there’s a better way to arrange the information? Or maybe it’s clear as it is.

My near term plan is to create a separate page for this resource, possibly with some download-and-print pdfs, maybe even a folding Pocketmod edition like The tiny book of viva prep (see here). I have more ideas of what I might do with this resource – but I’d love to hear your feedback and ideas for other questions, other Ways To Play or ways to implement the resource. Do send me an email or tweet at me with your suggestions!

If you play with 7776 Mini-Vivas I really hope it’s useful 🙂

Don’t

Don’t make assumptions about why a question is being asked in the viva.

Don’t answer a question without listening and understanding it first.

Don’t bluff, evade or lie.

Don’t hope for a particular finish time.

Don’t expect the viva will be impossible.

Don’t expect it will be easy either.

Don’t go without being prepared.

Don’t discount all of the work you’ve done and the talent you must have.

Don’t forget to celebrate when you’re done.

Before, During, After

Before, you could be nervous. During, you’re engaged. After, you’re relieved.

Before, you can practise. During, you’re doing it. After, you’ve achieved.

Before, you’re the candidate. During, you’re the expert. After, you’re Dr Somebody, PhD.

At different times you can think and feel and do and be different things.

At all times around the viva, at the end of your PhD journey, you’re where you’re supposed to be.

A Viva Prep Sandwich

Heard of the feedback sandwich?

It’s when you tell someone something good about their presentation/book/paper/whatever, then offer something constructive or negative, followed by something good. Good-“bad”-good.

A feedback sandwich – it has another name, but this is a polite sort of blog…

This good-“bad”-good construct got me thinking about viva prep, and I wonder if there’s a useful sequence we could follow when getting ready for the viva. As a series of activities, maybe something like the following would be useful.

  • Start with something that digs into something good about your work: say, reflecting on the value of your contribution or exploring ways that you could continue your work.
  • Follow that with something trickier, more difficult or potentially negative: how do you know your methods are valid? What might your examiners or someone else find contentious? What about your work could be “wrong”?
  • And finally consider something else about your work that’s good: take a positive step to annotate your thesis well, ask yourself some more reflective questions or make notes on the papers that support your thesis.

A viva prep sandwich, of sorts.

And perhaps tastier than the feedback sandwich, because you get to decide what it is made of?

Eight Useful Reflection Starter Questions

I encourage candidates to reflect on their research, their examiners’ publications and think about how these things connect. It’s useful advice but at the same time a little vague. What concrete steps can candidates take? It isn’t always clear to know what to think or do, so here are eight questions to get the process of digging deeper started:

  1. What are your examiners known for?
  2. If you have cited them, how have you used or been influenced by their work?
  3. How do you think your work connects with theirs?
  4. What is your research contribution?
  5. What are your examiners’ recent contributions?
  6. What would you like to ask them about their work?
  7. What do you think they would like to ask you about your work?
  8. What do you hope they will take from your research?

Saying “reflect” is easy; doing it can be hard. Use these questions to start the process, and if you find other questions that help then share them.

Digging Deeper With VIVA

Earlier this year I shared my directed thinking tool, VIVA, which is really useful for analysing chapters of your thesis in preparation for the viva. My general suggestion for VIVA is to take a sheet of paper and divide it into four sections. Then in each section make notes about the chapter you want to reflect on but directed by a specific keyword:

  • Valuable (to others): what would someone else find valuable in this chapter?
  • Interesting (to you): what interests you about the work?
  • Vague: what doesn’t seem clear when you read it?
  • Ask: what questions would you ask your examiners if you had the opportunity?

This kind of directed or prompted thinking can build a really interesting reflection and summary. It’s enough to simply reflect and make notes, see where your thinking takes you. You can go much deeper if you want to though. First, simply asking “Why?” after each of your responses helps:

Why would they find that valuable? Why are you interested in that way? Why is it not clear? Why do you want to ask those questions?

Or for Valuable you could dig into different audiences: is there more than one kind of value that someone could look for? Has the Interesting component of your research changed over time? How can you make something Vague more clear? If there was only time to Ask one question of your examiners, how would you prioritise?

Questions lead to answers sometimes. In my experience they nearly always lead to more questions. That’s not a bad thing if you’re trying to think deeply about something. If you use VIVA, think about how you can use follow-up questions to reflect on your research.

Near & Far

An examiner is an examiner. It doesn’t matter if they’re your internal or external, physically close or based overseas; it doesn’t matter if they’re near to your research area or far away. Treat them the same for your preparations. They may have different roles and different perspectives they bring to the viva, that’s fine. You might view them through different lenses, but make sure you cover the basics for both in your preparation:

  • What have they published recently, say in the last two years? You don’t need to become an expert, but check that you’re up to date on their most recent work in case it is relevant. In some ways it will influence their perspectives.
  • What are they most interested in? Look at their staff pages. If any of their interests are alien to you, then find out a little, enough of the basics so that you know the language of that area.
  • What are they known for? Be sure that you know the important stuff about them. What they’ve done, what they’ve achieved and what they’re expert in.

Remember that you too are justifiably an expert now. Whatever their questions and wherever they come from, you have a particular expertise that you can use to take part in the discussions of the viva.

Six Short Summaries

Six viva preparation ideas. Get a piece of paper and pick one of the following to write about. You don’t need to do all of these. Each one offers a different perspective on your PhD.

  1. Answer the question, “What’s important about my research?”
  2. Write about your conclusions and where they come from.
  3. Detail the helpful steers your supervisor gave you during your PhD.
  4. Write about what you found difficult during your research.
  5. Answer the question, “Who would find my work interesting?”
  6. Write down the first ten words that come to mind about your PhD. Expand on each.

A little thinking, and a little time spent on putting those thoughts into words on a page.