Preparing For PhD Dissertation Defense: Points To Highlight

Getting prepared to defend your PhD dissertation is a significant task for your work. You need to be confident and comfortable about your content. In doing so, this will help your audience understand its importance. You have spent a considerable amount of time with your content, and it is only fair you defend it to the best of your ability. To do so, it will be helpful to consider a few points crucial to your presentation and how you structure your plan of defense.

• What should people know about your dissertation? This is something you will think about as you prepare for your presentation. Such information is supporting details that will help you defend your work. You will need to think about elements that make your work unique and evidence that led you to your outcome.


• Why did you decide to research this topic in the first place? Your audience should feel a sense of interest from you. This is just the beginning of your defense. What did you learn about your topic that made you decide you wanted to take it to the next step (fully research it)? Share your thoughts about how you feel about the subject matter so the audience can understand your point of view.


• Why is what you are presenting plausible? If you feel your work is unique in its own context, what evidence do you have that will support this? Your audience should have several important points that may defend thoughts or ideas they may have. You may need to think about your topic from more than one perspective. Think about what your audience may be thinking as process information you provide. Your information will need to be clear, concise and consistent.


• How does your work compare to previous studies? One aspect about defending your work will be how it stacks up to other researchers in the field. You may want to share a couple of points related to work of former colleagues who studied the same content. You also need to consider how your work contributes to those in the field and how it relates to other accomplishments made.


• What is unique about your argument? Your argument may be something common, but you should have a twist somewhere that makes your claim more concrete. When you defend your work your argument should make a statement that shows where you stand and why.