eDefence Departmental Procedures
As we transition from having the external examiner physically attend doctoral oral defences to having them virtually attend, several procedural changes will come into effect:
- Your letter to the external examiner should no longer state that we will be bringing them here to St. John’s. Instead, your letter should include a statement similar to this: Doctoral oral defences at Memorial are conducted using web-conferencing software. Once the student can proceed to the oral defence, the School of Graduate Studies will contact you regarding the technical details of e-attending.
- The Beatrice Watts Boardroom (IIC 2014) has been configured for optimal web-conferencing and will be used as the sole location for oral defences. To facilitate bookings, we have reserved that boardroom on Mondays and Fridays. Please confirm with either Ruby Barron (rbarron@mun.ca) or Nicole Hiscock (nhiscock@mun.ca) as to the availability for specific dates, be it on either of those days, or for another day of the week.
- The School of Graduate Studies will perform a technical dry-run with the external examiner well in advance of the oral defence. The dry-run will last only 5-10 minutes. Examiners will not have to install any software; however, they must have (a) a high-speed Internet connection (b) a landline which we will call for the audio portion of the defence (c) an optional webcam and (d) perform a computer requirements test (https://admin.acrobat.com/common/help/en/support/meeting_test.htm) The requirements test ensures that their Adobe Flashplayer[1] is up-to-date and that their Internet connection speed is optimal for web-conferencing.
- For the oral defence, the School of Graduate Studies will handle all the technical aspects of the eDefence, from set-up, contacting the external examiner and operating the webcams. The defence itself will proceed as per your departmental practice.
- Requests for anyone else other than the external examiner to e-attend must be made in writing to the Dean of Graduate Studies well in advance of the oral defence.
The Dean has put aside a modest annual budget for flying in external examiners. Requests for these exceptions will be considered on a case-by-case basis:
- Departments shall make a formal, written request to the Dean, detailing the reasons why the examiner should be physically present and not attending via web-conferencing.
- Decisions are based solely on merit, i.e. the examiner’s pre-eminence in his/her field, and not on a first-come-first-serve basis. Departments who wish to fly in an examiner should start planning well in advance.
- If the request is approved, the maximum amount of funding from the School will remain at $1500.
- Additionally, a strict requirement will be that the external examiner must give at least one graduate seminar during his/her visit.
- The deadline to make the request should be no less than 2 months before the oral defence.
General information on eDefence can be found at: http://www.mun.ca/sgs/current/edefence.php
