eDefence
What is an eDefence?
An eDefence is a virtual oral defence. Through the use of web-conferencing software, webcams and teleconferencing, examiners actively participate in oral defences from a separate location. In essence, it’s a virtual face-to-face, interactive meeting.
Why did Memorial choose eDefence?
In an era of soaring costs and tight budgets, the School of Graduate Studies is committed to maximizing all available resources to meet the needs of Memorial’s graduate students. For less than half the cost of one examiner coming to St. John’s for an oral defence, we can now virtually host all of our oral defences for an entire year.
What are the benefits?
1. Greatly increased pool of eligible external examiners. No longer will the external examiner's physical location be a consideration in their appointment, but rather his/her expertise will be the key factor.
2. Weather delays and travel disruptions will no longer cause oral defence postponements.
3. Greater flexibility in scheduling defences – external examiners now only need to commit to several hours of their time as opposed to several days.
4. Component of the School’s green initiative (http://www.mun.ca/sgs/green/) – the carbon footprint for external examiners is completely eliminated.
5. A greatly increasing doctoral student population equals greatly increasing costs of flying in examiners. Not only does that mean that funds currently must be re-allocated from other areas, but these funds can and should be put to much better use elsewhere in graduate education, e.g. graduate student conference travel.
6. Elimination of a significant amount of paperwork for departments since they will no longer have to co-ordinate travel arrangements and costs.
How does it work?
The School of Graduate Studies contacts the external examiners well in advance of the actual defence and performs a procedural and technical run-through with them. For the pre-examination meeting and oral defence, the School handles all technical aspects; the oral defence proceeds no differently than current practice.
About the technology:
The School is using Adobe Connect™ (http://www.adobe.com/products/adobeconnect.html) cloud-based software to run the video aspect of eDefences. External examiners are streamed into the examination room via their own webcams; students and the examination board are streamed to the external examiners via SGS webcams. Software presentations, e.g. PowerPoint, are streamed via the Adobe software to the external examiners and via data projection to all those physically present at the defence. Due to Adobe’s built-in redundancy, we are able to offer stable and secure eDefences. Students do not have to worry about having to temporarily halt their defence due to examiners being disconnected and waiting until they re-connect! Since the software is based on Adobe Flash, there is no additional software for examiners to install, and the interface is truly user-friendly. Audio will be delivered via teleconferencing to avoid the “choppiness” of VoIP.
How are student electronic presentations impacted?
We use a laptop with the Windows 2007 operating system and with MS Office 2010 installed. Students who use MS PowerPoint or Prezi to design their presentations keep the same format. Mac users, however, will have to convert their presentations to QuickTime format in order for the presentations to correctly display. Alternatively, PDF format can also be used. For all other formats, please contact C. Dean Barnes well in advance of your defence date to ensure that we can accommodate the format used.
Are there any exceptions made to eDefence?
Under special circumstances, the School of Graduate Studies will consider requests to fly in examiners once eDefence has been fully implemented. Departments will have to strongly justify the rationale of bringing an external examiner to St. John's in a letter to the Dean.
Schedule:
eDefences will be run from the Beatrice Watts Boardroom, Room 2014, in the Inco Innovation Centre.
Optional phase: February 01 to April 29, 2011
Full-implementation: May 02, 2011
eDefence procedures for departments can be found here.
For more information, please contact C. Dean Barnes at deanb@mun.ca
