Comprehensive Dissertation Defense Tips

The dissertation defense is a difficult task for those who don't know what the defense is. According to Sonja Foss defense starts along with the starting work of your dissertation. Defense preparation refers to prepare yourself for presenting and defending the ideas of your thesis. It contains the rationale behind your selections and decisions, for instance, your theory choice and research methods. When you submit your early work, you have to face a lot of hurdles, for example, communication behaviors and waiting for approval of the research proposal from your committee. All these research activities consider defense.

During the course project, you make many exchanges with your committee for elaborating and defending your concepts and decision which are called defense. But the most important defense meeting comes at the end that belongs to the dissertation defense. It comes after a strenuous process and has extended efforts. This final dissertation defense has vital importance for graduate students. They should concentrate on it for success.

For final dissertation defense preparation, students can divide it into three different components that include, preparation, defense and follow-up. A brief discussion about these components is help full for researchers. They should follow these points for comprehensive defense.

Preparation

Better preparation involves planning. you should plan some defenses. You can organize the defenses with your departmental fellows and in other departments. These are very important to know the defense rules, deadlines and also about, how can you cover the schedule of a defense. You should begin all these like schedules, plan the date, time and place for defense meetings as early as possible. Because the chairman and committee members have a busy schedule. Your manuscript must be completed with formatting before the dissertation defense. It is an important part of the preparation to present a polished document to your committee. Prearranged and flawless presentation is a plus point of your defense. In the end, you should practice presenting the work and answering the questions.

Defense meeting

Usually, defense meeting starts with brief explanations by the chairman and committee members followed by your comments. These comments can be, “thanking for the committee to take out the time” etc.  A brief presentation considers a good presentation.  It should briefly cover the literature review, methods, analysis, findings, research questions, and recommendations for the future. During defense the members take their turns asking questions and discussing the points with agreeing or disagree. After questioning and answering they ask you can go. Committee members discuss and decide by vote about your defense dissertation result. Chairman's statement “congratulations” make you happy with success. Now your defense has got success and your dissertation declared passed.

Post defense

Post defense means you must celebrate your end work with plan and enthusiasm. You must check the norms, what and how your department celebrates post-defense parties. Then you can plan a well-organized formal party for your chairman, committee members, colleagues, friends and family. In the next step, you can make revisions for your work according to the instructions of your committee. After making revisions you should make bound copies of your dissertations and provide them to your chairman, committee members, colleagues, friends and family. You should also provide these bound copies to your department and libraries. The end time is the budget time. Create a budget list in which you can write all expenditure of publishing, ordering additional copies, etc.