Corrections done

I've given in the corrections. I hope the examiner is happy but I believe I've unequivocally addressed all the corrections that the list required.

I worry about my writing being too cryptic and consequently perhaps being misconstrued, but it wasn't worth taking any longer because the extra time was unlikely to improve my writing and content.

Another viva done

Sophia is through her viva with minor corrections. Soon she can go home to her family in China where she has a little boy that she must miss so much.

The photo is of her with her internal examiner after the viva.

It has taken her many years of perseverance and effort to complete this PhD, including marrying, then going home when it was nearly written because of problems with the block of flats she lived in, having her baby, waiting some years and then coming back to England in November to finish the writing. She deserves the congratulations.

Doing corrections

Are these corrections to my thesis or amendments? I've corrected all the little bits, the details of references and cross-references, a typo here, or a missing couple of words from a quote. I've addressed the the bullet points in the examiners' report, and drafted a response to their list of corrections explaining what I've done,how I've amended the writing and the logic of it.

The process is that you send your thesis to the internal examiner with a table indicating what you've changed and where, so that it's easy for them to refer to. Then if they don't like anything they are able to tell you easily and you can have another go. I'm so nervous about my changes that despite already having had a go at them, I've not yet sent them off, but am rewriting my response.

Apparently, the examiners can ask you to do only what was in their report, so once I've persuaded them I've done, I'm through.

SocialLearn team

I'm working on a project called SocialLearn and am with a team of people again, not all alone, like the PhD researcher is. I had a few days off aftr my viva, and when I came back, I was sitting at my desk, watching people move around and thinking that perhaps they were all going to a meeting that I didn't know about when they all stopped round and gave me a card and a clap.

It's going to be a good team to work with. I'm looking forward to getting to know them well.

Minor results

My viva yesterday resulted in PhD with minor corrections.

I followed the Ten Tips for getting through your PhD Viva more or less.

• I had a good piece of work
  
• my supervisors choose examiners who liked my work
• I knew my arguments
  

One of the amendments is to put in the introduction some alternative ways I could have done the work - that's always awkward because there are a thousand different ways to discard and would make a thesis ten times longer, but I need write only a couple of sentences I understand.

An interesting question they asked was if I'd ever come across such a cyclic model of engagement from a consultancy, being as consultants are renowned for producing their own models, especially two by two matrices. But no, I haven't, and I doubt anyone else has because my model came from thinking about Nahapiet and Ghoshal's model of social capital, and was empirically developed from the case studies. I haven't fully explained it on this blog partly because I wanted to keep the details until I was ready to publish. Soon they will be published in

1. my thesis in the Open University library
2. the MCD conference paper.

After it all, we quietly celebrated in the office with fellow students, anyone passing by and a bit of bubbly.

Viva preparation.

Preparing for a viva is a different task from preparing for an exam because you, rather than the examiners have set the syllabus, so you have to anticipate the questions, but it's the examiners who create the questions, and you have to anticipate what questions the examiners will create having read what you wrote. Is that complicated?

Amongst things I've done to prepare are:

• found generic questions,
• collected specific questions from my mock viva,
• imagined the questions,
• written answers to generic and specific viva questions
• discussed with my supervisors,
• reread my thesis,
• stuck post-it notes in it
• found and read papers written by the examiners
• had a mock viva with some horrid questions about how I could possibly have used that theory without citing GuruWhatsisName, and how do I reconcile a philosophical perspective with how I've done the research.
• identified the weak points in my thesis (I think, I hope)
• learned answers by heart
• listed corrections (I heard my examiner say at a speech to PhD students that he expected them to have a list of corrections so I'll have a short list of the typos if he asks )
• presented to my fellow students
• prepared a conference paper with my supervisors - a new experience from which I learned much

Help is available on the web at various sites:

• Times Higher Educational Supplement
• David Twigg on preparing for the viva
• Tips for getting through your PhD Viva from jobs.ac.uk
• The Final Hurdle - a blog that includes some links to other sites on vivas
• Survive your viva - a Guardian article from 2003 with advice from Rowena Murray
• vitae - one of the best for researchers
  

As the viva draws closer, I want to revise more, but also I'm fascinated by my new part-time temporary job researching the use of a new web site for social learning, and that work draws me in more each day as I get to know the job and meet people.

Revising and writing papers

Phew! I just uploaded a conference paper "Cycles of Engagement", due in today!

Revising my work for the viva started with

1. reviewing generic viva questions,
   
2. then the more specific ones that came up in the mock viva.
   
3. A third approach is to write a paper for a conference, and that's been the focus of my work over the last couple of weeks.
   

Of course, this conference paper for the Management Consulting Division biennial conference has got my supervisors' names on it, and deservedly so. After speaking with someone from the MCD at the Academy of Management conference last August, I was encouraged to present at the PhD consortium, but once I approached the MCD they suggested I presented a paper at the full conference. I wrote a proposal, and they accepted it, to my surprise and delight. But I shouldn't be so surprised, because now at the end of my PhD, I know what I have to say, so perhaps I wrote a sensible and interesting proposal.

After the mock viva, my supervisors offered to help me to write this paper, and I'm glad they did, because, in the last few weeks, I've learned a lot from the way they write. One supervisor addressed the challenge of how to put all the richness and detail that makes a PhD study what it is - into just 8000 words, restructuring the original paper I wrote; the other has greatly improved the flow of the argument. Whenever am I going to learn to write like this!

Why write a paper before your viva? Because it:

• helps you to identify the key points of your thesis,
  
• makes you reread parts of your thesis,
  
• helps you spot typos and mistakes before the examiner points them out to you

If the conference were before my viva, I'd also have practised speaking the points I'm learning by heart for the viva. But the viva is in May (probably) and the conference is in June. Look here for the paper if you want to read it because it's a good summary of my work.

I'll welcome constructive feedback, so do contact me through this web form.

Generic viva questions

Rowena Murray provides a set of questions for the viva, both in her 2003 book and in this pdf file from Strathclyde. Supervisors sent me a copy of Andrew Broad's Nasty PhD Viva Questions, which you can find as pdf here.
Before my mock viva, I attempted written answers to all of these, which was interesting because of my initial and my thought-out reactions. For example:

What is the area in which you wish to be examined?

Er, no thank you. I don't wish to be examined. No! Start again.

In one sentence, what is your thesis?
My thesis is that engagement between people is a cyclic and self-reinforcing phenomenon that can be analysed in terms of six interacting behaviours and conditions that form cycles, that might be described as threads, banners or wedges.

But these were generic questions so not as useful as the specific questions that my mock examiner thought up after reading my thesis, like for example,

Why is engagement important to be studied in a public sector context?

I addressed such the question of why the public sector here two years ago, because of

"the conviction that government is given crucial work that society very much needs to have performed well"

Why is engagement important to the public sector? Because a common cause of project failure is lack of effective engagement with stakeholders (OGC, 2002) and in the public sector, engagement is “a critical element of a consulting project” (NAO, 2006a).

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Murray, R. 2003. How to Survive Your Viva : Defending a Thesis in an Oral Examination. Maidenhead: Open University Press.
NAO (2006a) Central Government's use of consultants: Building client and consultant commitment. IN NATIONAL AUDIT OFFICE (Ed.). HMSO.
OGC (2002) Common Causes of Project Failure. National Audit Office and the Office of Government Commerce.

Mock viva

"I don't agree with you"

announced my mock examiner. Thank goodness it was a mock because I hadn't explained myself well enough, though I did have the argument in my thesis. So by facing a mock exam, I came to understand what they mean by 'defending your thesis'. My mock examiner was terrific at asking nasty questions, questions that I hadn't imagined, and none of her questions were on the list of generic nasty questions that I'd practised, but the practice helped me to articulate my defence.

Over the next few weeks, I'm going to blog some of these questions, and my more considered responses. Blogging must help me to work out what I want to say, and if you readers think of any issues, do ask.

Exam panel

Today the research school tells me that they now have the exam panel, so only today did they send off the thesis to the examiners. That means despite my giving two months notice that I was going to submit in February, despite my delaying till the 7th March, despite them having the thesis more than a week now, they sat on it and did not send it off immediately. I am not impressed by this useless delay.

Grades of PhD degree

A doctorate from the Open University may ultimately be a pass or fail, but there are five grades given after the viva:

• Award of the degree
• Corrections and modifications
• Substantial amendment
• Major revision and resubmission for re-examination
• Alternative recommendations for PhD candidates
• Fail

Straight award with no corrections is rare. The most likely result is minor corrections and modifications, for which you get a couple of months to do them in. Substantial amendment is still a pass and you get six months to fix the deficiencies. With amendments you don't have to get reexamined. I am not contemplating the lower grades.

Examiner chosen

They chosen my examiner, contacted him and they've accepted. They've yet to choose the internal examiner.

Progress

I gave my supervisor several chapters today. To my surprise, she commented on them being 'chapters'.

"but you told me to write chapter 4 two months ago, and the others just followed on"

I printed them out for her since we were both in the office and handed them to her in an A4 ring binder, which pleased her (and me) because it begins to look like a real thesis at last.

However, she and supervisor #2 could still say to analyse it a different way and set me back months. A fellow post grad had her supervisors do that. FPG'd prepared qualitative work, but when some number crept in, the supervisors suggested some statistical analysis as well, which set the work back two months. Then they realised that there wasn't enough data to get statistically significant results - well duh! Why couldn't they all have realised that a bit earlier instead of messing around?

Nevertheless, it's a week of progress because Sanjukta is through her viva and another OUBS research student will be submitting this week.

Hurrah!

Sanjukta's success

Sanjukta is through her viva with minor corrections. Hurrah and congratulations to her. Her subject was acquisitions and mergers, her title being the Market for Corporate Control and European Utilities.

We celebrated quietly with cake and tea.

Congratulations!

Doctor Wu!

Minor corrections - hurrah

Viva tension

Today our Chinese colleague has her viva. She says she's memorised answers for around a hundred questions. For each question she's learned a one minute answer and a ten minute answer. She knows what her contribution is to methodology, knowledge, and theory and she looks happy, ready and anticipatory.

This is the Chinese post grad who's renewing her visa (see here).

Ridiculous UKBA

I asked my post grad Chinese colleague if she'd got her visa back. Yes!

BUT

it's only extended until the end of January.

Her viva is in February - so soon she'll have to apply to extend it again . They've taken months and months to renew it - what was the point? It's ridiculous.

If the people at UKBA are so overworked that they don't have the time to process it, why do they want more turn-over?

Between submission and viva

Our Chinese student who has recently submitted her thesis can't go home. The Home Office has her passport, has had it since April, and not returned it. Although student and the research office and all the Open University officials have contacted the Home Office, still she doesn't have her visa and passport back. She can't go home and get back into the UK for her viva without it, but neither can she work here because she hasn't got a work visa. It's such a shame because these free months are the time when she should be able to go home for a break. But if she can't get back in to take the viva, then she won't get her PhD after her years of hard work.

It's sad and frustrating.

Nice things, unknown people

A nice thing happened to me this morning. A lecturer greeted me saying,

"I've been waiting to see you, to congratulate you!"

I quickly disabused her of the notion that it was me who'd passed her viva last week. But isn't it nice that our director had sent round an email announcing Linda's success, so that people can congratulate Linda when they see her. Director wrote:

"I send my warmest congratulations to Linda Wilks who had her PhD viva on Friday and passed with just typos! Her thesis explored how social and cultural capital shape and is shaped by individuals’ attendance at music festivals."

Linda's success is also announced in the Dean's digest this week, but lecturer said that was too difficult to read over the intranet from home, so the email was the way she knew. Anyhow, we're not sure that the Dean knows us. Lecturer says he doesn't know what her team do. He's never ever, in two and a half years, come and said hello to us lowly students. He's an unknown to us.

Viva - the last hurdle

In the post-viva euphoria phase, our successful PhD student points out this link to me. It starts by referring to the excitement of submitting the final draft, but then the dawning realisation that the viva formed another chapter. There is so much written and spoken about the viva, that it makes me nervous in anticipation, and I'm only half way through the process. There are web pages like "Nasty PhD Viva Questions", or PhD Viva or Tips for getting through; chapters in PhD books like Potter, 2006 or Marshal, 2004; whole books on just the viva, like Murray's, and a blogger .

How can what should be an academic discussion, become such a nightmare? I cannot imagine how I'll cope because the uncertainty of the months waiting beforehand mean I'll be a nervous wreck when I get to the room, so highly unlikely to be able to answer simple questions, let alone have a sensible discussion.

Fail at the last hurdle.

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Potter, Stephen, 2006, Doing Postgraduate Research
Marshal, Green, 2004, Your PhD Companion
Murray, Rowena, 2001, How to survive your Viva: Defending a Thesis in an Oral Examination