Viva Voce Examination 

Your supervisor and School will organise the nomination and approval of your Examination Committee about 3 months in advance of you submitting the thesis for examination. The viva voce examination will normally be held within 2 months of receipt of the thesis by the examiners. It is the responsibility of the Chair of the viva voce to make all the arrangements for the oral examination. Viva voce examinations are normally held on campus but a virtual viva voce may be considered under exceptional circumstances. 

You will need to be prepared for a general discussion of your research area and a detailed explanation of your research and its conclusions. You also must be prepared for the examiners to approach the thesis from a different starting point than you and to emphasise different aspects of the thesis than you considered. You will be given the opportunity to defend your thesis in every respect. You should enlist some help from your supervisor in your preparation.

There are differing opinions on the value of doing a mock viva voce. Some consider this practice run helpful in getting you talking about your research and hearing yourself speak. Talk to your supervisor about this and if you think it would help, ask them and/or other members of academic staff to put you through your paces.

You must be present, together with the Chair, Internal and External examiners. Your supervisor may attend in a silent capacity, if invited to do so by you, and the Chair of the Examination Committee agrees to this.

There are no rules concerning the length of time of a viva voce. Examiners have the discretion to make it as long or as short as they think necessary. Each combination of thesis, student and examiners is unique.

• No corrections required:
  You go directly to the submission of your final thesis.
• Revisions required: This is used when there are changes required to the thesis but where examiners do not consider a new examination to be necessary. Revisions are typically carried out within 3 months of the viva voce. During this time your student status will be 'for assessment'. There is no fee implication and you continue to have access to UCD facilities such as UCD Library and UCD email. Once you have completed the required corrections, you should meet with your Internal Examiner (who is usually in charge of overseeing corrections) to review the corrections. If they are satisfied that all necessary corrections have been made, then you can proceed to the submission of your final thesis.
• Revise thesis and submit for re-examination: In this case more work needs to be carried out. There may be gaps in the literature review, data collection, analysis or discussion that need addressing. The time needed to do this will be specific to each candidate. You will need to register as a student for the period when you are completing the revisions to the thesis, for a minimum of one trimester. Your research will be supervised until the required work has been completed. Once the revisions are complete, you resubmit the thesis to the University together with the Research Degree Examination Form signed by your Supervisor. Upon submission of the thesis for re-examination, the Examination Committee shall be reconvened by the Chair of the Examination Committee to conduct a second viva voce.
• The candidate transfers to an appropriate graduate programme:
  Here, the Examination Committee deem that the research is not sufficient for the award of a PhD but merits the award of an exit degree such as a Research Master's degree. You will not be automatically awarded a Research Master's or other award. You need to change registration and the thesis would need to meet the relevant award criteria for the exit degree award. If the School approves of the transfer to the exit degree, it will be necessary to submit one hardbound copy of the thesis that has been fully amended to reflect the change to the exit degree to the Student Desk so that the University can consider the award of the degree.
• Do not award the Doctoral Degree:
  In this case the work is not deemed appropriate for any research award. You will receive a transcript for any taught modules taken during your time as a student in the University.

A virtual viva voce is where the student or a member(s) of the examination committee participate in the examination via a virtual learning platform such as Zoom.

Normally, the viva voce examination for doctoral students and other research degree students, where applicable, takes place in person at a UCD campus. However, under exceptional circumstances, permission to conduct a viva voce virtually may be sought.

It is important to note that if student or member of the examination panel wish to take part virtually then permission must be sought in advance from the Graduate Research Board (GRB).