Examining a PhD and need some advice

[QueenRefusenik]

I'm just ploughing through a PhD I'm due to examine very soon and it's all over the place. There's some good stuff in there but it's all bizarrely out of order and confused - think presentation of data in chapter x, followed by discussion of basic terms of reference only in the following chapter, etc. Obviously I'm going to comment on structuring issues in my report, but my question is, is it my job as examiner to suggest a specific BETTER structure? E.g. "Section £.&.5 should go before section £.@.#". Or is it just my job to say 'sort out the bloody structure'? Normally I would probably make a stab at the first version but in this instance much of the detail is a bit outside my area of expertise and I don't think I'm necessarily the best person to do this (and it will take for bloody ever to make sense of it and I have a ton of other stuff to do by last week!). The other examiner might do it, of course, which would be ideal, but they haven't sent their report through yet. Any suggestions/opinions?

It depends whether you think it should pass or be referred, to be honest.

If you think it should pass, then it is really fair for the student to be given pretty much chapter and verse on where everything should be, and exactly what you want them to do. They do it. You check it's been done. They pass.

If you think it should be referred, then you can say the stuff you've said here, with a few examples of mis-ordering, and get a sense in the viva of whether the person is actually capable of structuring their thoughts coherently (in which case it needs to be referred, enough information given that they can go away and restructure it, and then be re-examined) or not (in which case, you are honestly looking at what needs to be done to it to turn it into an MLitt).

Chances are the poor supervisor has been desperately trying to get the person to be coherent, for years now, and has run out of ideas about how to get the work any better.

Not easy :(

Ommward good advice, thanks! A colleague I badgered about it pointed out that the other examiner and I will obviously both write a post-viva report together to detail what if anything needs to be done so that's when we can get into specifics, that reassured me. And yes, it will be very interesting to see in the viva if it's just a writing issue! Yes I've had a lot of very fluent-speaking students at all levels produce some amazingly confused written work, it's definitely a hard skill to master but I'd kind of expect them to be a bit closer by the end of their PhD... Oh well. Onwards...

I think if there are a limited number of specific changes that you want made (section 4 before section 2 for example), then it is very helpful to write those down for the student. This doesn't have to go in the pre-viva report, it can just go in the list of corrections.

but if the whole thing is such a mess that it has to be re-structured from scratch, then there is a much bigger problem.

Referral (revise & resubmit within 12 months) with a strong set of very clear Examiners' recommendations. Be quite directive about the need for the re-structuring of the thesis.

Of course, the viva will tell you whether the candidate is capable of this, but I think candidate's deserve at least the chance to do the work that's required.

And ensure that you ask for a 2nd viva at that External & Internal Examiners have to approve the resubmission.

Please accept my apologies if I'm doing a granny/sucking eggs thing here, but I've found that by far the best - and fastest - way to force a technical document into a coherent structure is to insist upon the use of MS Word's "Table of Contents" functionality. We once had to deliver a complex technical report - in French - that had been assembled in a hurry by some junior research workers: there was less than one hour left before we had to leave for the airport, and my newly-employed French colleague (it was his first day with us, and he had to deliver it) had just picked up the final version of the document for the first time - and was appalled. "They won't accept this," he told me. "It has to be completely restructured." I looked at my watch and told him there was no way. He shrugged. "Email me the file."

Within 15 minutes he'd added a ToC section, inserted draft descriptive headings to every section, subsection and sub-subsection, updated the ToC accordingly and printed it. Using the resulting randomly-arranged jumble of headings and sub-headings as a crib sheet, he then went through the entire document again, cutting and pasting the various sections into a structure that made the ToC display a logical sequence of hypotheses, methodology, results, statistical tests, conclusions and recommendations for further work. He then tidied up his draft headings with more formal titles and subtitles, corrected a few remaining anomalies, updated the ToC and hit the print button. The taxi arrived just as the final page of the restructured document rolled off the printer. It was a demonstration of the art of the possible that I've never forgotten.

Perhaps your student would benefit by being shown the ToC feature, and told that he really needs to learn how to use it. A demo of it ought at least serve to highlight how bad the structure can appear to the reader when it's not being used. The trouble I find with MS Word (in common with Excel) is that very few people are ever taught to use its less well-known features properly - so unless you just happen to know what its capable of, you're simply never introduced to them - and I'm guessing that your student is probably no exception.