The School of Graduate Studies (SGS) is maximizing the benefits of technology to enhance and streamline examination techniques for master’s and doctoral students at Memorial.

The approach is two-fold. The first point is to shift from a paper-based thesis to an electronic version, or, e-thesis. The second point is to increase the number of e-defenses taking place, so that doctoral thesis examiners can participate in an oral defence via webcast as opposed to being flown in from other far-away institutions.

According to C. Dean Barnes, programs co-ordinator with the SGS, the advantages to going digital are huge. With regards to e-theses, the benefits range from slashing students’ considerable printing costs to eliminating the cost of shipping boxes of hefty paper documents to the national repository, Library and Archives Canada, and U.S. research aggregator ProQuest.

In the planned Phase I of the project, a student uploads his or her thesis to a secure server, the supervisor (or supervisors) approves or rejects the thesis electronically and the SGS then approves or rejects the thesis electronically. Approved theses are sent to the QEII Library, which then deposits them in the Memorial institutional repository and sends them on to ProQuest via a file transfer protocol (ftp) while making them available to Library and Archives Canada.

“In addition to making a lot of sense financially and logistically for students, faculty and staff, the web-versions allow Memorial to get its research into the public domain much, much faster,” said Mr. Barnes. “Here at the School of Graduate Studies, our view is that the electronic approach to final evaluations at the master’s and doctoral level is an obvious choice.”

Development for e-thesis is slated to begin late fall 2011 with the aim of going live in winter 2012. As per Library and Archives Canada regulations, Memorial and all other Canadian universities are required to have mandatory e-thesis in place by April 2014. To aid students in writing their theses, the SGS has prepared a series of optional thesis templates which can be found at www.mun.ca/sgs/etheses/templates.php.

As for transitioning to e-defenses, which will solve a lot of growing travel budget headaches, the SGS is currently operating on an opt-in basis. In February, three PhD students – two from the Faculty of Science and one from the Faculty of Education – chose to defend their doctoral theses electronically. The students’ examiners e-attended from universities located in the provinces of Quebec, Saskatchewan and British Columbia. One examiner e-attended from Baton Rouge, LA. The school expects the majority of oral defenses to be managed this way by May 2011. That said, the SGS will reserve a modest annual travel budget for some in-person examinations.

Dr. Noreen Golfman, dean of the SGS, chaired the first e-defense. An external examiner from the Université de Montréal was webcasted into the boardroom with the other examination committee members and the defending student.

“It was interesting, because here we were facilitating an oral defense just as we have countless times before, but this time one of the examiners happened to be present electronically, in real time, instead of in the flesh,” said Dr. Golfman. “Although we are still working out some time-delay wrinkles, it felt completely normal and couldn’t be easier.”

For master’s and doctoral students interested in submitting and defending their theses electronically, please contact deanb@mun.ca. For more information, please visit the following pages on the SGS web-site:  www.mun.ca/sgs/etheses/index.php and www.mun.ca/sgs/current/edefense.php.