7. Oral Examination
The oral examination will normally be conducted at the University, in accordance with the Regulations for the award of the degree. At the discretion of the Vice-Chancellor, however, and in exceptional circumstances only, the oral examination may be conducted at another place.
The following must be present at the oral examination:
- The Chair
- The Internal Examiner
- The External Examiner
(or the Chair and two External Examiners in the case of staff candidates)
The candidate's supervisor may be invited to the oral examination with the candidate's agreement, but may only speak at the invitation of the Chair.
The purpose is threefold:
- to enable the Examiners to assure themselves that the thesis is the candidate's own work;
- to give the candidate the opportunity to defend the thesis and to clarify any obscurities in it; and
- to enable the Examiners to assess the candidate's general knowledge in his or her particular field of learning.
The Examining Board should not communicate to the candidate any indication of the outcome of the examination until the examination is complete and all reports are finalised.
In exceptional cases, the University's Research Degrees Board may, given sufficient notice, consider giving permission for oral examinations to be conducted by electronic means. A separate set of guidelines is published for this purpose and Examiners who have been asked to conduct an oral examination by such means are asked to familiarise themselves with its contents. Guidelines for the Conduct of Viva Voce Examinations by Electronic Means can be found online Guidelines for the Conduct of Viva Voce Examinations by Electronic Means
At the oral examination, care should be taken to ensure candidates are encouraged to feel at ease so that they can display their knowledge and abilities to best effect, and the strengths as well as weaknesses of the thesis should be acknowledged and explored. At an early stage in the proceedings, candidates should be given an opportunity to explain precisely what their thesis is intended to achieve and what they believe to be its significance as a contribution to knowledge. If there appears to be a major discrepancy between the candidate's aims and the content of the actual thesis, the reasons for this should be explored. Likewise candidates should be asked to explain their choice of title when there appears to be an imperfect correspondence with the contents of the thesis. Candidates should also be given the opportunity to explain any apparent failure to use important materials, whether primary or secondary, or neglect of relevant approaches or methodologies.
It is important that, where a thesis reveals significant deficiencies which might lead to a report that is not unequivocally favourable, a representative sample of these should be drawn to the candidate's attention and time for explanation and defence allowed within the examination.
It is possible for Examiners to disagree to a greater or lesser extent in their evaluation of the work. It is, therefore, desirable that the Examiners confer before the oral examination so that, should significant divergences of opinion be identified, a strategy may be devised which would resolve these differences by agreed means (which might include the careful structuring of the oral examination). Although it is desirable that the Examiners strive to resolve their differences, should it prove impossible for them to do so, the Chair of the Board should report this fact to the Registry, and no recommendation for any, or no, award should be made. In these circumstances recourse to an additional, Arbitrating External Examiner may be had, as detailed in Section K below.
The oral examination is an integral part of the examination process for a research degree, with the specific purposes set out above, and Examiners are asked to exert great care to avoid giving the impression at any time during the oral examination that the oral examination is, in any sense, a mere formality.