The viva meeting was a very positive one. There were two examiners, on ‘internal’ to the University of London and one ‘external’ from a university outside of the University of London (I attended Birkbeck). The examiners have a lot of experience in the field of Higher Education and work based learning and both have a lot of experience in managing vivas for PhD students. The result was for me was that it was more of a discussion than a defense, which was great. My supervisor attended the meeting, but could not say anything during the viva. I still have some corrections to make on the thesis document, but I will hopefully submit that but the end of the year. So a great relief and a lot of celebrating!
FYI before the viva I did look at the information available to prepare for the day, similar to looking at the handbooks for BAPP (Arts), to make sure of what it was I was supposed to be doing.
An example of this is a powerpoint form Birkbeck describing the process and requirements of the viva so click on the link if you are interested. It is always good to go to your own institution for instructions, but other higher education institutions in the UK also have a lot of information that is worth checking out online.
