 |
 |
In response to Victor's comments, 2 further inquiries: 1) Has anyone had experience in the US of an external review of a Design PhD program to assure the quality, or at least bench- mark the standard, of research and dissertations that that program is producing? (One respondent has indicated to me off-list that he has performed this task for a West Coast Institution.) 2) I would like to collect examples of the instructions institutions outside the US send external examiners to guide them through the PhD evaluation process. If you have access to these letters or manuals that your institution sends to accompany a dissertation that is to be reviewed, and can share it, please email these off-list. By the way, I am not sure I agree with Victor's feelings about the external examination of a PhD process. I believe that there is a role for for both formative (advising) and summative (examination) assessment of a PhD, especially when the claim of any PhD is to be making a significant contribution to extending a community's knowledge of a phenomenon. To this extent, I do not see the difference between examining a PhD and being asked to review a tenure dossier, a situation that also determines the fate of someone who you must not have had an opportunity to counsel, and a process for which one must not be paid. Nor is it that different to peer review, thought the stakes are less. Cameron On Nov 27, 2012, at 7:25 PM, Victor Margolin wrote: > By comparison, I have had several experiences where I was invited to be an external examiner of a PhD thesis from another university but what I received was the final document as approved by an internal advisor. Hence, I had no opportunity to make a contribution to that document. I was then faced with the situation of approving it as is or not. In one instance, there was a lot of good material in the thesis and had I seen it earlier I could have made suggestions to improve the final version. Without that opportunity, my only option was to recommend pass, fail, or revise, a rather harsh set of choices. > To be an examiner who only deals with the completed thesis is something of a waste of energy, while also putting the examiner in an unfair position to have to make a judgment about the student's future. > Victor ----------------------------------------------------------------- PhD-Design mailing list <[log in to unmask]> Discussion of PhD studies and related research in Design Subscribe or Unsubscribe at https://www.jiscmail.ac.uk/phd-design -----------------------------------------------------------------