Speaker 1: Hi everyone, so as a UK-based university lecturer, one of the highlights of my job is supporting PhD students submit their thesis. It's a big moment for the student, it can be an equally big moment for the supervisor, so in this video I thought I'd chat through the steps that I undertake to make sure the student is ready and that I'm supporting them in their PhD journey. So hi, if you're new to the channel, my name is Caroline, I'm a UK-based physics lecturer, so I've had several PhD students now work their way through the system and successfully get their PhDs. I also have been through the PhD journey as well myself, but now as a supervisor, when my students are getting ready, to submit their dissertations into the examiner, there's a few things I like to do and checks I like to make just to ensure that we make that transition into submitting their work as smooth as possible. Now the first thing as a supervisor is I'm there to help guide and to help shape the project to ensure that it's going to meet the requirements for a PhD. And critically, that includes making sure the work is a novel contribution to the research field and that also that work has been recognised or been shown within an appropriate research community. So one of the first things I do is I work very closely with my PhD students as we go through their years of study and as we're getting towards those final few months, I'm just checking, you know, have they got a novel research output? Are we adding something here? Has the student contributed in a novel way to their research? And I'm also checking if they've got a novel research output, and have we ensured that that research has been out and shown at conferences and published in papers? So these aren't things you can do at the last minute. These are things that take, you know, months, years through that PhD process. And so when we're getting to that final stage and the student is just about to hand it in, I then like to make sure that the student has a record of all the places they've shown their work, you know, all the things they've published in, because that can be really useful. And actually, quite often in our work, we include a list of publications, and a list where we've shown the research at the end of the thesis. One thing that I also have to check as the supervisor, and often, you know, my students are very good and very sharp at reminding me what they also need to do, is to make sure they've completed the necessary university training. This is going to be different depending on which university you're at, which department or subject you specialise in. At my university, there are a series of research workshops to go to and events to go to, to help PhD researchers get ready both to write their thesis and then the process of having that thesis in and undergoing a viva. And, you know, quite often at universities, you can't hand in your research work, your thesis, until you've ticked those boxes to say you've had that required training. So that's something on my to-do list as a supervisor, is to check in with the student and to make sure that they have been, to the relevant courses. Something else that's key on my list of activities is I need to make sure that the student has registered their intent to submit their thesis and the title of their thesis work into our doctoral research centre. Now at my university once you declare the the title of your thesis on that form that is the title that then needs to be on that research piece of work and also on that form we have to declare who's going to be the internal examiner, the external examiner and if necessary a chair to oversee the process. So actually as the students are starting to finish up writing up their thesis behind the scenes I'm in the process you know contacting my colleagues, my network of collaborators and trying to identify and secure an appropriate internal examiner. So that can also then go on the paperwork so the the doctoral centre then have you know the date that we're planning to submit the work, the student's title of their research body of study and also who the examining team are going to be. Something that also happens I guess a little bit earlier before you start writing the thesis and then something that I double check at the end just before the student hands in their work is that the examiner is going to be the external examiner so that can also then go on the paperwork is whether they've met the regulations for writing a thesis as required by the university. So this can be a word count. It might be a page count. It could be a particular style of presenting figures. You know, it's just checking that we are meeting the university formatting for getting that thesis ready. And especially lately with the move to hybrid working used to be that we handed in a physically bound copy. So it used to be called a soft bound copy that we would hand in as the body of study for the research. But these days, actually, it's quite often an electronic file that needs to be shared in a particular format. And there also needs to be a declaration on the work and the student needs to sign up to it to say it is their own piece of work. So I just like to make sure before that student presses submit on their thesis that all the regulations, all the university requirements have been met. And I guess what I've thought about really so far is all the kind of the processes and the procedures that you have to go through to make sure that you're meeting the requirements of the university and the requirements of a doctoral programme of research. But I think a huge part then as well, especially in those final few weeks for the student, is your role as a supervisor is there to help empower them. Keep them on track, keep everybody motivated, because I know, you know, from from personal experience that if you've been working on a research project for like three years, three and a half years, four years, those last few weeks can be so tricky. You feel like you're so close to finishing and handing in your work and not having to look at that particular research topic again, at least for some time until the exam. But equally, those last few weeks can be really quite stressful. You know, you can be in my case. I was analysing over a particular graph and agonising over it and making sure that I'd portrayed this data in the correct way in my in my thesis, my write up. You might be battling with referencing, you know, sometimes formatting, depending what word processing software you've used. Sometimes there's a formatting kind of error or glitch that you have to try to fix. And that can make you feel quite stressed as you're trying to get this final body of work together. You may be one of these people that never feels it's quite ready to hand over that piece. You know, you may look at it and think, oh, I could just do this or I could just do that. And again, I think they're part of the role as the supervisor is to step in and to say, no, you have done enough. You know, quite often I feel my role is to go, no, you've done a significant body of research. You know, you are adding to the field as far as I can see it from a novel perspective. And, you know, I think as your supervisor that you have enough here to put in for your thesis. The point at which you hand in your thesis, I think, is a huge milestone. And it should be something that we acknowledge and celebrate that as researchers and academics and scholars, we've completed a body of study that is at the level that we are happy to put in to go for our PhD. And as a supervisor, I am very keen to acknowledge and recognise and support. That for my students and then make sure they take a break afterwards and then help them get ready for the award exam. But I'll save the Viva process and the PhD exams for a different video. So, yeah, let me know. Have you been through the PhD process yourself? Have you supported others going through it? Maybe you've got a friend or family member who's gone through the PhD process. What was it like the day they submitted in their thesis to be examined? You know, was it relief, exhaustion? Did you celebrate? Leave me a note in the comments. As always, I'm here every Monday at 10 o'clock. So please do join our little channel here on YouTube. Take care of yourselves and I'll see you in a week's time. Bye. Bye.