I recently attended an 'PhD by Project' examination at a faculty of
architecture and design that strongly supports the Research Though
Design approach, where a 'PhD by Project' consists of creating
artefacts and writing a short supporting 'exegesis'. I had seen
presentations of work in progress by other phd candidates at this
faculty in the past but this was the first time I had seen a PhD by
Project examination. The purpose of the examination is for the
candidate to present their work and for a panel of external examiners
to assess the work.

If we avoid discussing the nature of Research Through Design and
instead take a 'institutional theory of art' (Danto, Dickie) type view
that a PhD is whatever the community of scholars accepts, then the
comments that the external examiners made after the candidate's
presentation are of particular interest. Some of my notes the
examiners' comments were:

1. an examiner questions the candidate about a part of the project
that had not been discussed during the presentation.



2. an examiner identifies an important theorist that the candidate
had not referred to in their presentation.

3. an examiner criticises the mode/channel the candidate chose to
present the project though.

4. an examiner asks the candidate to name other practitioners whose
work is similar or different from the candidate's own practice.

5. an examiner asks how the different parts of the project relate to
each other.

The candidate could not to adequately respond to these questions.

What I found interesting about the examiners' comments is that they
are, broadly, questions that I would expect examiners would ask about
any PhD, whether it is Research Through Design or a traditional
dissertation. Comment 1 is a question about the degree of analysis of
the results; comments 2 and 4 are about situating the work within the
existing knowledge of the field i.e. literature review; comment 5 is a
question about the strategy that underpins how the project was done
i.e. methodology; and comment 3 is broadly a question about theory
construction/contribution.

So it is interesting that while this faculty promotes the 'PhD by
Project' programme as special and different, the examiners comments on
the presented outcome refer to more or less standard aspects of a
traditional PhD. Of course I have no idea what the examiners then
discussed during the assessment process after the presentation so
maybe the assessment criteria are special and different.

But if we assume that the comments the examiners made after the
presentation have some bearing on how they will then assess the
'examinable outcome', then this raises a pedagogical question: are the
tasks that the candidates are required to complete during their
Research Through Design programme constructively aligned with the
criteria by which the work is finally assessed? In this case is it
really the candidate's fault that they could not answer the examiners
questions adequately or is it the supervisor/faculty's responsibility
to give the candidate opportunity during their studies to produce the
sort of work that can answer these sorts of standard questions?


Best
Luke


Luke Feast
PhD Candidate
Faculty of Design
Swinburne University of Technology