The thesis presentation

The the presentation shall be planned to be around 40-45 minutes. The presentation covers an introduction to the subject, a description of the aim with the work, a description of what has been done, and the conclusions from the work. PowerPoint slides are usually used during the presentation.

The opposition
After the presentation, it is time for the opposition. The opposition should be about 35-40 minutes long. Also during the opposition PowerPoint slides are typically used. Remember that most people in the audience have not read the report. If you would like to highlight something in the report, or when you comment on the aim of the thesis, it is often a good idea to copy the statement of the aim from the thesis and display it on the PowerPoint at the same time as you pose your questions. About 30 minutes of the 35 minutes for the presentation shall be spent on discussing the contents of the thesis. A maximum of 5 minutes are allow to be spent on report formatting, titles, languages. If you have comments on how to improve the layout of the thesis report, save such details to afterwards. Only summarize your impressions of the layout, formatting, selection of headings etc. of the thesis. The other 30 minutes should be spent on asking open questions to the presenter. Prepare around 15-20 questions on the material in the thesis that you think is important to discuss. If you would like to have a better explanation of some part of the thesis, this is a good moment to ask such questions. Typical things the opponent may ask is: Is the aim of the thesis satisfied? Which are the strong and which are the weak parts of the thesis? What is the major contribution of the thesis? How does the parts of the thesis, such as aim, theoretical frame of reference, methodology, experiments, analysis and conclusions, relate to each other? You probably would like to ask questions on the models and methods chosen in the thesis and if they are the most appropriate one for the problem; how the analysis and the results relates to previous work in the same field; and comment on details in the experiments, the analysis; and the conclusions. This shall be around 30 minutes in time. Even if it is the responsibility of the opponent to make sure that the 30 minutes is well spent, it is also up to presenter to answer the questions in good and exhaustive way (i.e. not just 'yes' or 'no' on every question). To conclude the opposition the general impression of the thesis work and the report shall be stated.