In this instructional video, Steve Tippins, Ph.D., walks doctoral candidates through the final stage of the dissertation process – the defense. He outlines how to structure the PowerPoint slide deck, recommending a brief recap of the proposal (≈25% of the allotted time) and dedicating the majority of the presentation to results (Chapter 4) and their interpretation (Chapter 5). Tippins warns against over‑loading slides with text, emphasizing that committee members have already read the dissertation and will read ahead if slides are too dense, which can cause loss of control and awkward questions. He advises using concise bullet points as prompts, rehearsing the talk, and managing the flow of the defense. For handling questions, he suggests pausing, asking for clarification or re‑phrasing, acknowledging when a query is outside the scope of the research, and confirming that the answer was satisfactory. He also discusses coordinating post‑defense revisions with the chair to resolve contradictory feedback and to streamline communication, recommending scheduling the defense at least a week before the final submission deadline. Finally, he highlights practical administrative concerns such as Turnitin and AI‑generated similarity checks, urging students to address these early to avoid inflated similarity scores. Throughout, the tone is supportive yet pragmatic, offering concrete, experience‑based tips to help candidates finish strong and navigate the defense efficiently.
Chapters
Today I want to talk about the end of the process, the final steps, and the defense. Okay, so the end of the dissertation. First of all, congratulations when you get there. This is a big deal. You want to make sure you finish strong, just like you did moving all the way through. And typically, your defense starts with a PowerPoint presentation of some sort, whether it's live or many times now they're done from a distance, but it's a PowerPoint presentation. So you're going to have to create slides to cover your material. Some schools have a slide deck already that they want you to follow. Great, that saves you a lot of time. If you did a proposal defense, you probably had a slide deck there. Now, the difference between the proposal and the final defense is obviously you've got your results. Typically you're going to spend maybe 25% of your allotted time on reminding them about your proposal, the problem statement, the purpose, the research questions, a little bit about the literature and the methodology. Most of your time is going to be on the results, Chapter 4, and what they mean and how they integrate, things like that, Chapter 5. So you want to put together a, you you know, a defense like that. A lot of times you run in the 30, maybe 40-minute time range for these defenses. So you want to practice ahead of time so that you're not just reading. Now, one of the big issues I see on people's defense slides is they put way too many words on the slide because they want to make sure they cover all kinds of things, and they cut and paste sections of their dissertations. You know, first of all, your committee has already read your document, so they don't need to reread it and in order during your defense. Also, if they are reading, remember this: they can read faster than you can talk, which means you've lost control of them. They're reading ahead, and then they get done and you're still 75% through. They're going to be on their laptop, maybe booking flights for their next vacation or playing a game or something like that. And this is when weird questions start to pop up because they jump back in on the next slide, maybe, and they, "Oh, wait a second, I want to—" And that can get flustering for people. So bullet points are great, just little reminders of where you need to be, and then you're discussing from there. And keeping control of the flow of the defense helps things go a lot easier for you. One of the largest fears I hear from people is, what if they ask questions I can't answer? Well, it's okay sometimes to say I don't know. If they're asking a question beyond the scope of your research, you can say, that's a really interesting question. However, I'm not sure about an answer to that because that's well beyond the scope of my research, but maybe it's something I can pick up on in the future, in future research. So you're acknowledging that they've asked an intelligent question, but you're also letting them know, I also know that this is beyond what I did, and I'm not going to venture into that area because I don't have the expertise in that area. Now, if they do ask you a question based on your research, it's not uncommon for people to initially go, oh my God, I don't know the answer to that. What do I do? Pause. Ask them, can you rephrase that question? Or, if I hear what you're asking, is it this? And you rephrase the question. And what that does is it gives your mind a moment or two to catch up. And then I always like at the end of something like that to say, and did I fully answer your question? Letting them know you care about their question and are concerned that you provide them the information they want. So pausing like that will allow you to many times be prepared to answer the question. Hopefully, your dissertation committee is such that they have approved your proposal or your defense, your final document, before you get to defense. So you probably shouldn't get too many weird questions you don't know because they've already approved it. There won't be many questions out of left field, so to speak, that are there. Every once in a while, somebody may try to stump you, and it's also okay to say, "I don't know," or engage in a conversation. "Wow, it could mean this, but however, what do you think, because this is also process— part of the process of you becoming a member of the academy. So, you know, own it. Another thing about preparing your slides and your presentation and the questions that you might get asked during the course of your research: there may be one or two committee members who ask specific types of questions. Well, if you can address those specific types of questions and ahead of time as part of your presentation, that can disarm or eliminate questions from them and make them happy that you've already addressed the material for them. You may get— it's not uncommon to say, yes, we're going to pass you. However, make these changes or here's some feedback. And that's great. You always want to schedule your final defense, hopefully a week, maybe more if possible, before the final deadline your school has to turn things in so that you have time to handle these during the defense. If they're going to ask for revisions or make comments, you want to ask, okay, when will, you know, will I get a copy of this? Will it be in writing? Will it be something I listen to? You know, when will I get these so that I can comply with the university deadlines on this? You may get contradictory comments, and this happens all through the process. The easiest way to handle this is to work with your chair. To say what's the most important. Typically, these are not going back to the committee. Every once in a while, they'll say, okay, we want to see these again. The nice thing for a chair to do with revisions is to say something like, okay, we've got the revisions, and unless anybody wants to see them specifically, I will handle all of the updates so you don't have to. So that means it's only going to go to your chair, and you don't have to have multiple people slowing you down in this process. As you've probably found out during the process, some people will give you feedback and then they may give you different feedback over time. That can be frustrating. In their defense, sometimes they give feedback and then they fully understand what you're doing or things open up more for them and they're able to say, oh, okay, here's the feedback we need. So you can handle that, you know, as need be, and again, work with your chair if there are contradictions there. And finally, on a dissertation, it's an entire document, not just the final defense. There can be Turnitin or AI. You know, this is too much AI or too much Turnitin. You want to work with that well in advance. And with things like Turnitin, you want to make sure you can clear out everything that's been evaluated before so it's not judging itself against itself. and you end up with, you know, a 98% match instead of what should be 11% match or something like that. So addressing these things early, but preparing for your defense, getting your slides down and being in control of what's going on are really going to help your defense go much, much, much faster. And practice ahead of time. I wouldn't practice 40 times ahead of time, but get really comfortable with what you're doing.
