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Yeah, I would; should I be firm? Because some of the examiners were insistent on me showing X, Y and Z where I haven't even show A, B and C. :/



Aw, mate. Thank you. I was a bit upset with it really :/

An examiner, who was not examining, but just watching the presentation, said to me that, I did a lot of work and it was a good job.

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Yeah! I should have said this! :/

I could have just said; "Urm, one moment please; just let me finish this one and we could go to that slides" :/

It's my first PhD colloquium so I didn't know what to expect.



I did but. But it was just brief. I just explained my layout to my main supervisor; but my co-supervisor wasn't there and we just communicated through email.

So today, I presented my work in front of these 3 examiners using Powerpoint slides.

On the first slide, I presented the overview of the concept that I was working on. Suddenly, one of the examiners quickly wanted to see my references, which of course would be on the last slides, so I had to scroll down to the last slides and show them the references. After they were happy with that, I went up back to slide 1 and proceeded to explain my outline, definitions and problem statements on slides 2-4. Once I reached slide 4, one of the examiners wanted to know subtopic X, which was on slide 9 (very eager to know subtopic X I guess). But in order to explain X, I needed to go through slides 5-8 first, if not the flow of the presentation would be disconnected. Since they were so eager to know subtopic X, I skipped slides 5-8 and jumped to slide 9. Some valuable information and findings were lost because I skipped slides 5-8. When they asked me questions on some topics, I needed to show them slides 5-8 which were skipped because one of them were so eager to see subtopic X on slide 9.

At the end of the presentation, one of the examiners said that my presentation was not organized and I didn't define the concept and the concept should be defined first.

The heck? :/

I've already defined that on the 2-4 slides and since they kept on asking me to jump here and there, of course it would look disorganized.

Am I in the wrong here?

*If I'm not clear, I'm really sorry. A bit tired really from all the work done :/

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Yes. What I meant was, argue as in constructively say something that is found wrong, and give an opinion.

But I noticed some lecturers don't like it! =/



Very true. But how about the lecturers that won't listen to constructive comments or always thinks he's/she's right? Should we just play suck-up or be a parrot and nod as if nothing' s wrong? =(

Also, there are lecturers that won't admit that they are wrong, in fact, re-divert the error to the particular student(s) and saying that they are the one who made the mistake =/

I mean constructively argue? If you were to be sent to a class to attend, would you argue with the lecturer if you found some of the facts are wrong and need to be addressed? Same goes with the supervisor?

If lets say that during a presentation, the person who's asking is insisting a question that is obviously wrong to be answered, what would you do?

Thanks

I will be doing a PhD soon with an SV that has a different field then what I'm going to work with, would that be advisable?

The PhD that I'm working is something related to education and the SV has almost 2 decades worth of teaching experience so I might find his input valuable. The only concern that I have is that his PhD is in an unrelated field, and his research interest would be different as well, but his willing to supervise me. Would the be ok or advisable?

Has anyone done their PhD with an SV that has a PhD unrelated to your own research interest?

Fair point.

You might be right, and if you are, it would be a bit hard for me to swallow to be honest =/ (Well, you know, after all the research that had been done).

But if it's for the best, then I'll let it be.

Thank you. I think that would be the argument of the panel; it's not biomedcy (enough) but more towards educational theory/social sciences. So, if that assumption is right, I don't see what's the real problem now really =/ The way I see it, if the assumptions holds, they want me to do something of a pure biomedcy, which is rather strange and a bit unfair really. If there's no problem with the research, and the argument now is just that, it's not 'pure' enough, I just don't think it's fair to even present the arguement to the candidate. But, that's my opinion of course. I might be wrong =/

I'm holding asking my supervisor since I'm waiting for the response from the panel whether to accept me or not. If they reject/accept me, I'll get in touch with the SV. (I don't know whether that's a good plan or not thought =/)

Thanks hazyjane (lol, I'm feeling a bit hazy myself ;) ).

I understand. I'm sorry for the vague input =/ But I think you could appreciate that I'm not in the position to tell in great detail what the proposal is all about =/

To answer the question, I would believe that the proposal is trying to solve a well defined problem; it's a problem plaguing the current situation. I have also made a pilot study to support the claim and from the empirical evidence, it does support the hypothesis that there's a problem and it needs to be solved, which is the whole point of the PhD research - sorry if I missed this one out.

Ok, I'm going to try giving a greater understanding of my research topic. Assuming that you're in the Biomedical Engineering field, and you would want to find a solution to solve the problem plaguing scientist with problem X, in the industry. You claim that it needs to start from the root problem, which is in the University education itself and a technique needs to be defined. You proposed the technique for your PhD topic. Some argued that your proposal wouldn't be in a more technical research anymore, as it's more of empirical research now, and as well as less Biomedicy.

How should one defend such argument?

Many thanks for the reply
*If it's not clear, let me know, I'll try again. =>

Yes, my research is based on literature, hypotheses, experimentation, results followed by analysis, which of course falls under the Science - but I would think Engineering or even the Arts e.g. Economics, Accounting, Education, etc would be under this criteria as well.

But even if I did propose to implement/design a solution to a problem, wouldn't that require us to do literature, hypotheses, experimentation, results followed by analysis as well?

Has anyone ever been criticized with the above? Your research proposal is not 'Sciencey' enough? I'm doing Computing and I just heard that my research is not Computing Sciencey enough.

I think that's the most ridiculous thing that I could ever heard. What defines something to be 'Sciencey'? Or "Engineery" lol

Could someone help me understand?

Hi there,

I just finished defending a research proposal and some of the questions that the panel asked (even the way they asked) left me wondering:

What would you do if the panel is wrong when questioning you, such as:

1)definitions that you wrote on the research e.g. technique vs. method
2)not giving a sound reason why they disagree on certain things, to the point that it annoys you - just disagreeing because of a reason and they couldn't expand further.

Would you mention that they are wrong? - How would you approach this? Would you ask for a source? Would you argue back if the source is wrong or bias?
Would you question them directly to defend yourself? - e.g. "The reason you mentioned is not clear and somewhat inaccurate because..."

or,

Lets say one of the Profs is basing the criticism on his own opinion(s) with no strong supporting facts or evidence to validate his criticism, to the point he's dismissing your own thoughts with no evidence whatsoever. Could one say something like this?,
"Well this is Science and we shouldn't based it on opinion(s), it could be biased and it could also have no supporting evidence, I could say that a horse is better pink because in my opinion, it's going to make the horse faster, stronger and aesthetically pleasing to the eye. But this is an opinion. It could be wrong!".


I don't know if it's a good idea or not to do such things, but the person, I think, would really need to defend their work or risk being label as not being able to do so.
________

I sincerely believe that I would need defend the work as best that I can and I might use sarcasm to make a point, especially to those who stubbornly refused to hear a valid argument like the one above.

Opinions are greatly appreciated =>

*I'm sorry if I didn't structure this post greatly. I'm a bit tired after defending my own research proposal lol =/

CONGRATULATIONS!!

I'm interested to know this as well.

Ah, thank you for the reply. Yes I was thinking just now if I just selected the single Uni, then it would be bias to that Uni only wouldn't it? So say for example, I would like to avoid bias, would it be suitable to have sample population from selected Unis from the selected country? I'm trying to find this method but I would need samples for it. So at the moment I'm trying to define the population to test it with but I've no proper procedure on how to define the population properly. I do know 'who' the population is, but I do not know how far I need to go to get to population; would it be just with the faculty in the uni or faculties from different unis.

But even if I did select the country, wouldn't that be bias for the selected country and selected unis within that country?