PhD defences by Zoom

The Corona pandemic has shown that PhD defences can take place via Zoom. Some new preparations and routines are needed in order to ensure that the event will work. The following are suggestions for which steps can be taken regarding the virtual part of the PhD defence.. The starting points are three:

• The PhD defence act must first and foremost fully preserve the nature of dialogue between respondent and opponent, with the opportunity for the members of the assessment board to ask questions after the opponent has completed her or his part.
  

• The public access of the event should be guaranteed, with notice given and the possibility of posing questions to the respondent ex auditorio from the audience, after questions from the members of the assessment board have been answered.
  

• The virtual room in Zoom must be protected against interference. Unfortunately, in a few cases, PhD defence events have been disrupted by rogue posts from online participants. Read more under More secure meetings.

Please read the information from your faculty.

Assessor, co-host

Make sure that all PhD defence events that run online have one participant assigned as assessor and co-host, alongside the Chairman. Make sure you have appointed a co-host and also listed that person in the meeting settings as "alternative host". Co-hosts can control most of the same functions in a Zoom meeting as the host.
The most important thing is that co-hosts can keep track of the chat, questions in the chat and can remove any participant who disturb the proceedings.
In many cases, departments can get staff at their own campus management areas to help with this, but if that is not possible, the department concerned can appoint another co-host. These co-hosts are offered special training in Zoom, tailored to the task.
The training takes place via Zoom, primarily on Wednesdays at 14:00–16:00, in connection with the open workshop. Depending on the co-host’s previous experience of Zoom, the training takes between 45 and 90 minutes.

Contact support-elarande@uadm.uu.se as early as possible before the defence if you would like training. State which PhD defence is involved (name of the author of the thesis, date of the defence and faculty) and which Wednesday you would like to have your training. If none of the times is suitable, get in touch to suggest alternative times and we will contact you.

Maintaining order

At the beginning of the PhD defence occasion, start by informing participants and the audience how the event will be carried out and how and when questions may be asked.
It is a good idea to set up the meeting with participant microphones disabled (muted) and also that participants cannot activate their microphone themselves.
An alternative is to only accept questions that are asked via the chat. The chat should then be set up so that all chat is directed to the host.
Another alternative is to only allow questions via audio and only after the person who wants to ask has been had his/her microphone unmuted. Audiences can ask for the attention by using the Raise hand function in the Participant list. It is of course possible to use a combination of the two.

Recording

If the event is to be recorded, everyone in the audience will be asked whether they want to attend the event or leave. There is no way to attend without being part of a recorded meeting. Here you can, for reasons of transparency, allow anonymous guests to join. To avoid being identified participants can use an incomplete name without video and without a profile image. If a participant behaves badly during the event, the host and co-host can remove them.
The best way to record is to plan in advance who will do the recording. When the Zoom meeting is started, that person can be given the ability to record with the Allow recording setting by the host or co-host. The setting can be found under Manage Participants / more for that user. The recording is saved only locally on the computer that is recording.

Save the chat

Remember that the chat is NOT recorded. The chat can be saved by clicking on the 3 dots in the bottom right of the Chat window and selecting Save chat.