The responsibilities of the technician during a completely digital defence

Responsibilities as host

• The defence must be conducted as a webinar, so you need to get a webinar licence, no later than four days before the defence. You will need this licence for both the defence and the practice meeting. Read more about the differences between a regular Zoom meeting and a webinar. 
• Conduct a practice defence session in Zoom, together with the candidate, the chair of the defence and the committee (provided they are available) two days before the defence. During this practice session, make sure to inform the candidate and the chair of the defence about how the digital defence will be conducted, how to mute/unmute themselves and share screen.
• As host, you must schedule the disputation in Zoom, and ensure that all necessary participants are invited. Those who have to be present, in addition to yourself, are the candidate, the chair of the defence, the chair of the committee, the first and second opponents. The link to the webinar should also be shared with the PhD administrator, who will post the link on the candidate's defence announcement. 
• Others may choose to attend, but will most likely not play an active part in the defence.
• You will be the host, the chair of the defence, the candidate, and the committee will be panelists (1. opponent, 2. opponent and the chair of the committee). Everyone else will be attendees. 
• Remind the chair of the defence, the candidate and the committee to mute themselves when they are not speaking. If they forget, you should do it for them. 
• The candidate and the opponents should keep their camera on during the entire defence. The chair of the defence only needs to have their camera on when they speak. The chair of the committee only needs to speak privately with the rest of the committee (read more about that below). 
• Even though Zoom allows for more than one person to share a screen at the same time, we advice against using this option as it does not work optimally. Instead, we recommend one person sharing at a time, and changing between candidate and opponents sharing whenever necessary. 
• When the chair of the defence invites the audience to ask questions ex auditorio, you must monitor the participants to see if anyone "raises a hand", signalling that they wish to ask a question. At this point you must either invite them to ask the question in writing in the chat or to ask it directly, by unmuting them.
• The chat function should be turned off for attendees during the defence. Only turn it on if someone wishes to ask a question ex auditorio. 
• When it is time for the opponents, the chair of the defence and the chair of the committee to "leave" in order to decide if the candidate has been found worthy of the degree of PhD, it is your responsibility to send them out in a separate Zoom meeting (webinar does not have breakout rooms). You need to join them just to check that they are all there. Remind them that they need to use their own private link to return to the webinar when they are finished. After that you can leave them and return to the webinar. When they return the chair of the defence will then announce their decision and say a few concluding words, after which the formal defence is over. (In the Faculty of Humanities this meeting is not part of the defence, so this point is not relevant for any technician hosting a defence in that faculty).
• After the defence, ask attendees to raise their hand if they wish to be promoted to panelist, so they can share video and control their own microphone. You can also transfer the role of host to the candidate or a supervisor, so that there may be some time afterwards for speeches and well-wishes, that you do not need to be part of unless you want to. 
• If technical issues occur that simply cannot be resolved right away, the chair of the defence will pause the defence until the issues can be solved. If it still cannot be solved, the defence may need to be called off and rescheduled.
• If you have not been able to attend any specific digital disputation training in Zoom, you can take a look at the recording from the technician training meeting (only in Norwegian) from March 31st, and from the webinar specific meeting on April 28th (only in Norwegian).
• Checklist for the defence technician at a completely digital defence. 

The trial defence session

• You are responsible for creating the Zoom session for the trial defence. This should be done in the same way as you set up the real defence (see below), making the candidate, chair fo the defence and the opponents panelists. 
• Remind all participants that they should use the same equipment (microphone and camera) and location (office) during the trial session as they will during the defence. 
• All active participants should be invited to try sharing a screen. You will probably need to change the share screen settings to allow panelists to share a screen.
• Show functionality related to managing participants, changing view options, chat, etc.
• Go through how the committee and the chair of the defence will join the separate meeting to discuss the candidate at the end of the defence, and how to return to the webinar afterwards, so that the entire committee and the chair of the defence has tried this at least once before the actual defence. (Not relevant in the Faculty of Humanities).
• Invite the chair of the defence to explain routines during a regular defence, and the responsibilities of the opponents. 

Settings when scheduling the defence

• Create and set up a digital disputation Zoom user (only in Norwegian). Keep in mind that parallel meeting for the same user in Zoom do not work very well. If there will be more than one defence at the same time associated with the same disputation user, make sure you set up multiple digital defence users in Zoom. If you need help with this, contact Morten Berntsen. 
• A defence will involve either two or three webinar sessions: one for the practice meeting, one for the trial lecture (if it is not a recording), and one for the actual defence. To simplify things (for the other participants, only one link for all sessions) we recommend setting up only one webinar, and edit the time and title whenever a session is completed. 
• To schedule a webinar you must use the online interface. It is not possible to schedule a webinar in the desktop client. You must be logged in as the digital defence user. 
• Choose Schedule webinar and give it an appropriate name, like “Digital Disputation: <Candidate's name>”. You do not need to add a description. 
• Set  the time to match the start of the defence. The meeting will start earlier (30 minutes at least), but that is not a problem. The general audience will only see the scheduled starting time, while you and the other panelists will be able to have a practice session during the 30 minutes leading up to the starting time. 

• Do not select recurring, not Registration, not Password.

• Turn on video for both host and panelists, and set Audio: Both.

• Under Webinar Options only Practice Mode should be on. Turn off Q&A.

• Provide a backup technician as alternative host. This person will later appear as a panelist. As long as you have scheduling privileges for the disputation user, you will automatically become host when you start the webinar. 

• Click on Schedule

• Under Invitations: Link to attendees is the link that you as a host can use to access the webinar. It is also the link that should be published on the defence announcement, so copy and send to your local ph.d.-administration.

• Invite Panelists. Candidate, the chair of the defence, the chair of the committee and opponents need to be panelists. 

• Rename the panelists, by adding their role in front of their name (Candidate, Chair of the defence, chair of the committee, 1. opponent, 2. opponent). This makes it easier to keep track of who everyone is, and you will not have to rename them during the actual defence. In addition they will keep their altered names even if they should leave the webinar and return.

• Under “Email settings” click edit (on the right hand side) next to “No reminder email to Attendees and Panelists”. Set it to 1 hour and 1 day. Panelists will then receive email notifications. This makes it easier for them to find the right link, especially when they need to jump between the separate Zoom meeting and the webinar. 

• When everything is set up and all the necessary people have been invited, go back and edit the webinar to match the practice meeting. Change the title to something like "Practice meeting <Candidate name>" and change the time of the event. The panelists will then be notified automatically one day and one hour before it starts. 

• When the practice meeting is completed, you should change the time and the title of the webinar to match the next upcoming event, which will either be the trial lecture or the defence. New email notifications will then be sent out one day and one hour before the new time set for the webinar. The title of the webinar should always reflect the content of the webinar, i.e. whether it is the practice meeting, the trial lecture or the defence, as well as include the name of the candidate. This makes it clearer for everyone else that they are in the right place. 

• Remember to also set up the private Zoom meeting for the committee and the chair of the defence, where they can discuss the candidate. (Not relevant for HF). 

  • You can use your own UiO user account for this.

  • Choose Recurring, set up the meeting with a password and select Generate Automatically under Meeting ID.

  • Select Enable join before host.

  • Remember to share an invite link to this meeting with the committee and the chair of the defence a short while before the meeting should start. This must be done for all the webinar sessions, so either two or three times, depending on the type of trial lecture. This is because the committee need to practice it during the practice meeting, and they need to discuss the candidate after both the trial lecture and the defence. If the trial lecture is recorded, the committee can handle discussing the candidate on their own, and you need not set up a meeting for them. 

• When everything is set up, it is recommended that you send out a general email with information about the technical aspect of the upcoming defence. You can find an example text here.

Prior to the start of the general defence

• The digital defence webinar should start at least 30 minutes before the official public defence, to allow for participants to connect, test microphones and camera, and figure out how to work with Zoom.
• Disable the chat function for attendees. This will need to be enabled again when the chair of the defence invites the audience to ask questions at the end of the defence. 
• Set the Attendee view to Speaker view (in the participant panel). 
• During this start-up period (practice session), you as a host, should cover a few ground rules before starting out. This should cover:
  • The candidate and the members of the committee should not leave the meeting until the chair of the defence officially declares that the defence is finished. 
  • How microphones should be muted whenever you are not supposed to speak.
• When all preparations have been completed, all panelists are present and everything works, you can start the webinar by clicking Broadcast. This will end the webinar practice session and attendees will be let in. At this point the chair of the defence should take over as a general leader of the defence, leaving you to focus on any technical issues. 

The general procedure during a defence

• If the candidate decides to perform their trial lecture live, with opponents and chair of the defence, you must function as technician for this session as well. The trial lecture is prior to the rest of the defence.
• The chair of the defence will start the defence by introducing the candidate
• The candidate will take over and present their work. This will most likely involve screen sharing to present slides or a "blackboard" from an iPad. In some faculties this presentation is made by the first opponent, rather than the candidate. 
• The chair of the defence presents the first opponent who then takes over and puts the candidate's work into a larger context. This is also likely to involve screen sharing, but only the first opponent needs to speak.
• After placing the candidate's work in a larger context, the first opponent will ask questions for the candidate. They may also want to jump back and forth between the opponents screen sharing and the candidate's screen sharing.
• When the first opponent is finished, there may be a short break, but that will be decided by the chair of the defence. In some faculties that chair of the defence will now invite the audience to ask questions ex auditorio. 
• The chair of the defence introduces the second opponent who then takes over.
• The second opponent and the candidate will have discussion. 
• When the second opponent is finished asking questions, the chair of the defence will usually say a few words before inviting the audience to ask questions ex auditorio (provided they have not already been invited to do so after the first opponent finished). Anyone who wishes to ask a question can signal by raising their hand. The host can see this by clicking on "Participants", and look for a red hand next to a participant's name.
• When the potential questions from the audience have been answered, the chair of the defence will invite the candidate to say a few words, typically thank the committee, supervisors, etc. 
• If your faculty or department does not usually hold a separate meeting for the committee, the defence is now done. Otherwise, follow the final points before finishing. 
• Finally, the two opponents, the chair of the defence and the chair of the committee will leave the webinar to join a separate Zoom meeting to confer and reach a decision about the candidate's work. Everyone else may stay in the main session. You need to make the candidate a co-host before joining the committee and the chair of the defence in their separate meeting.
• The committee and the chair fo the defence then need to return to the webinar and the chair of the defence will announce their decision, and say a few words about what will happen afterwards, and officially end the defence.
• More details about a defence.