Hi John,

Good to hear from you.

Sometimes academics forget that examining a PhD is a simple assessment
task. It's not god made, we decide on the best ways of doing it.
It has two parts. One part is assessing the candidate. Theo other part is
assessing the examiners.

1. The first part is the examiners checking whether the evidence the student
presents shows that they have the competencies expected of a new doctor
(it's pretty easy to list these competencies - there's no magic).

2. The second part has 3 aspects: a) assessing the examiners to make sure
that they are setting the same levels of doctoral competencies across the
world; b) assessing whether the examiners are interpreting the candidates
evidence appropriately in terms of how it represents the new doctor's
competencies; and c) checking that they haven't introduced any bias as a
result of their own theory hobby horses or politics or whatever.

Research shows that PhD examiners are actually not very good at it and their
assessment standards and practices are compromised badly

Universities don't like to make a big thing about this so the words in the
documents about PhD examination mostly refer to the first part (examining
the student), and the processes that are put in place are mostly about
addressing the second part (assessing the quality of the examiners and
trying to ensure that they assess better than they would otherwise.

Naturally over the years examiners don't take this sort of thing lying down.
Their response has been to work the system to get build some traditions to
get some personal benefits. Doing a viva can involve a day or two off,
perhaps a stay in a nice hotel and definitely a good lunch.

In essence, examiners pretend the viva offers a special way of inspecting
the 'real worth' of a new doctoral candidate. It builds examiners' status
and - well there is always the day out on the train and the good lunch.

Here in Australia, the idea of a viva translates to loss of a night's sleep
on a 'red eye' overnight flight and buy-it-yourself lunch at a university
library caff followed by another red-eye flight. In the old days it was a 6
week ocean voyage. The combination really messes up examiner judgment.

Bit of quick logic said,  'hmm use a couple of examiners - one local for the
Australian flavour and one overseas to make sure the local examiner is not
being too tough on the students 'cos they're bound to have a bit of
"cultural cringe". Do it with the thesis. The examiners are supposed to have
read it for goodness sake.  Forget the viva, it takes up too much of the
lunchtime.'

And so, Australian universities typically have no viva. Instead they
triangulate the assessment with 1 local examiner and  1-2 expert examiners
from other countries and it is based solely on the thesis with a bit of argy
bargy over the phone with the chair of the supervision panel if they need to
ask the candidate personal questions (like where the heck is chapter 3).
Until recently, doctoral candidates' theses were typically examined by 3
examiners but more recently it has changed to 2. One reason is that if 2
disagree it is easy to ask a 3rd examiner and take the best 2 out of the 3.
The other reasons is that Vice Chancellors on half a million dollars a year
(plus perks) thought that examiners were way overpaid at 100 quid for
reading and marking up 100,000 words and paying for 3 of them was obviously
excessive.

Looking to the future, I can see a new enthusiasm for vivas in Australia  to
improve standards and resolve quality inconsistencies. Skype has a role,
providing everyone buys their own lunch and maybe in the longer term it
might possibly remove all that need for writing a thesis and the poor
examiners reading it. In the limit, it might obviate the need for
undertaking research at all.

Best wishes,
Terry

PS has the food in the Elizabethan improved yet?

-----Original Message-----
From: PhD-Design - This list is for discussion of PhD studies and related
research in Design [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of John
Angrish
Sent: Friday, 4 March 2011 6:57 PM
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: Re: PHD-DESIGN Digest - 2 Mar 2011 to 3 Mar 2011 (#2011-52)

In a message dated 4/3/11 00:06:49, [log in to unmask] writes:


> In order to inform a university policy on this matter, I was wondering if
> anybody here has experience of remote vivas, and can offer advice or point

> to university policy that is well established.
>
>
I have been external examner for PhD in Australia without going there. So
maybe our Australian friends could say what their regs say about an external

who is not there.
John Z L