What are the questions asked in project Defence?
Project defence has come to stay, and the only way to graduate in Nigerian universities is to at least defend what you have written (or copied and paste) in a convincing manner. Gone are the days when you could just copy and paste an article from the internet and dump for your school. Our Nigerian school system is changing from dumping grounds to speech oriented institutions, which means that you must be good at presentations in order to scale through. At times students confuse themselves with content of their work. The truth is that it is better to be more confident with a poor content, than to be un-able to defend an excellent research work.
Just imagine a project defence room where you are presenting your research work in such a fabulous way, and your panel members just can’t stop nodding, gazing at you with their mouths wide open and clapping non-stop for you…It is just an imagination, so wake up! Put more work to it by reading this article, apply it and pray your panel members do not turn your project defence to project attack!
In this article, I am going to give out some useful tips and tricks on how you can have an awesome project defence and presentation. In order to make reading this article more pleasurable, I am going to give tips on how what to do before the defence day, on the defence day, and inside the defence room. So enjoy!
What are the questions asked in project Defence?
TIPS TO APPLY BEFORE YOUR DEFENCE DAY
First before your project defence, you must ensure you have a romantic relationship with your project topic and the whole content. When I say ‘romantic relationship’, I mean your research topic or research thesis must be of great interest to you. If your topic is too difficult or it was imposed on you by your project supervisor, you better start loving the topic or better still; look for a way to get it changed for you. In my little experience, I have discovered that students who hate their topics usually have problems flowing in the defence room, and it can mean bad for you. One trick to choose a nice research topic is by looking for subjects that you love talking about. If you’re a car freak, you should be considering topics like ‘the impact of official cars on employee productivity’. You would be amazed how this simple trick will go a long way in helping you.
Second, do adequate research on your topic. Before defending or presenting your project, you should source for similar materials on your topic. Focus on how the problem was identified and addressed. Do not dream of having an awesome presentation if you do not know common terminologiesd associated with your topic. Identify your keywords, variables, background of the study, history of the study and all the variables before your defence date. If you writing on ‘employee motivation and its impact on productivity, you should be able to know your two variables-‘employee motivation’ and ‘productivity’.
Third, know your motivation for the study or research. Most final year students in Nigeria defending their projects do not perform well because, they fail to identify their motives for the study. The motivation for your study is probably the first answer to numerous questions you may be asked in the defence room. Before a research is undertaken, there is usually a problem to solve. The desire to solve that problem becomes your motivation for the study. Please do not use money, or the need to graduate as motivations for your study. Motivation for the study is best applied in questions like ‘why undertake this study’? ‘Tell us about your work’?
Fourth, know your strength as well as your weaknesses. Knowing your strengths and weaknesses will help you prepare a backup plan in case the direction of the defence changed in an unfavourable way.
Fifth, discuss with professionals in your research field and do group discussions with friends. Make your friends your panel members, and defend in front of them. Tell them to criticize and ask numerous questions. With this little training you will be tuning your mind set for what a defence room will look like. You can also seek professional help.
What are the questions asked in project Defence?
ON THE DAY OF DEFENCE
On the day of defence, a lot of students panic and some may even forget their project topics. Just apply the following tricks and tips and you will be just fine!
First, rehearse with friends again. Look for people to discuss your project with all over again. This will help you remember your key points.
Second, develop good self esteem and confidence. Before you enter the defence room, make use of some good self esteem! Think well about yourself, and have in mind that these professors and senior lecturers you are going to face are human beings that do not know everything. So be in control. See yourself as someone going to lecture a bunch of people that do not know much.
Remember 90% of your fears cannot be seen at first, unless you start showing it. Project defense can be very easy once you completely understand your research work and are prepared for the questions. During the defense, the panel of assessors will ask you questions to test your knowledge of the research subject matter, depth of your work, the results and conclusions you arrived at. The questions that would be asked will fall within these four categories:
-What is your research project about?
-What did you do?
-What did you find?
-Why does that matter?
Below are some of the likely questions you will be asked in a project defense room. Study these questions and suggested answers. You can also ask previous students in your department and your supervisor to guide you.
What are the questions asked in project Defence?
COMMON PROJECT DEFENSE QUESTIONS AND ANSWERS
WHY DID YOU CHOOSE THIS TOPIC
This might be the first question you will be asked, and you need to have a good response. You should talk about the motivations for the study. Talk about the research problem you wanted to address which made you embark on the study.
BRIEFLY, EXPLAIN WHAT YOUR RESEARCH PROJECT IS ALL ABOUT?
To respond to this question, you need to fully understand your research project. Basically, be able to repeat your abstract.
WHAT IS THE SCOPE OF THE STUDY
Here you briefly state the specific aspects of your project topic that was covered.
WHAT IS THE SIGNIFICANCE OF THE STUDY?
To answer this question, you will need to state how your research work will help other researchers, educators, organizations(like the case study used), practitioners and policymakers.
DID YOU BRIDGE ANY GAP FROM YOUR STUDY?
Here you should talk about how your study addressed the existing problems/concerns that made you carry out the research.
What are the questions asked in project Defence?
WHAT ARE YOUR RESEARCH VARIABLES?
This question is asked in order to find out if you really know what your research project is all about. Explain your independent and dependent variable(s) to show them you really grasp the concept of your research topic. Identify the variables in your project topic, define and explain the.
RESEARCH METHODOLOGY
This is usually the chapter three of your project report. To respond to this question, you should briefly state the research design procedure you adopted for the research. Talk about the data collection methods and sampling techniques employed in the research. This is where you state the reason(s) for the choice of research methodology used. For example, if you used the survey research method, you can state reasons such as: no interviewer bias, cost-effective, it enabled you (the researcher) to collect information from the sample without influencing the population of the study e.t.c
WHY DO YOU THINK YOUR RESEARCH IS RELIABLE
To answer this question, simply tell your audience/panel of assessors that the threats to research reliability (which are participants error, participant bias, research error, and researcher bias) did not occur during the research. Or you can simply say that you made sure the threats were reduced to the barest minimum.
WHY DO YOU THINK YOUR RESEARCH IS VALID?
To answer this question, simply tell your audience/panel of assessors that the findings from your study can be generalized to other relevant settings, group or case study.
IN WHAT WAY(S) DOES YOUR RESEARCH PROJECT CONTRIBUTES TO KNOWLEDGE?
This question is similar to your significance of the study. You should talk about how your research is aimed at addressing a problem that was not addressed by previous researchers in your field of study. You should also briefly state how your project will advance understanding in your research field.
WHAT ARE THE LIMITATIONS ENCOUNTERED
No research project is perfect. It is common for at least one limitation to be identified. To answer this question, talk about the weaknesses that were out of your control. You can talk about how weaknesses such as the short time frame for the research, lack of research studies/materials on the topic, lack of available data, the combination of lectures, exam and project research, limited sample size and selection, e.t.c impacted the analysis of your research data.
SHOW US HOW YOUR SOFTWARE WORKS (FOR COMPUTER SCIENCE STUDENTS)
Make sure you are familiar with how the software works. Also, be sure that there are no errors in the software. Go ahead and show the panel of assessors how the software functions. You can also show them some records which you entered previously.
What are the questions asked in project Defence?
WHAT SOURCE OF DATA WAS EMPLOYED FOR THE RESEARCH?
Here, you simply state the data collection methods that were used in the study. You should state if primary sources such as questionnaires, interview, observation OR secondary sources such as textbooks, journals, articles, e.t.c were used. If you combined primary and secondary sources, briefly talk about it.
WHAT ARE YOUR FINDINGS?
Show the descriptive results from the study in a convincing and clear style. Make sure your findings refer to your research objectives/questions.
What are the questions asked in project Defence?
BASED ON YOUR FINDINGS WHAT ARE YOUR RECOMMENDATIONS/SUGGESTIONS?
This is where you talk about the importance and implications of your findings from three levels namely:
- Research (various ways other researchers can improve or refine the study)
- Theory (the new contributions that you are adding to the body of knowledge) and
- Practice (how the information gotten from your study can make practice better, improve the operational procedures, solve problems, improve policy making e.t.c).
