So, for those who follow this blog, you might have noticed a significant lack of posts recently (for the last 6 months, whoops). There are a few reasons for this, ranging from teaching responsibilities to workload and even personal factors. The most significant reason for the last couple of months however has been my confirmation panel. In this post I am going to tell you a bit about what confirmation panels are and how they tend to work in the UK, and my experience with my own.

A confirmation panel for those who don’t know, is one of the major assessment points in the process of a PhD. It is where a PhD student technically transitions from being a PhD student, to being a PhD candidate. What this means is essentially the work you have done so far looks like it will be viable to achieve a PhD by the end of the allotted time.

For a bit of added context, the structure of a PhD is very different to any taught degree. There are no exams, or any pieces of coursework you get assessed on. You have appraisals at regular intervals throughout your program, which is when someone in the department outside of your supervision team looks at your progress and gives you feedback and some suggestions, but this is often based on a small snapshot of your work so is usually quite broad advice on where you should be up to. Outside of these appraisals which are mainly just check ins, there are only two major assessment points, your viva, which is right at the end once you complete your work and your thesis, and your confirmation panel. These happen to be the only two points of a PhD where you can traditionally be failed and kicked off the program (no pressure). The conformation panel in the UK tends to be within the first 18 months of study for a full time student or 24 months for a part time student, this is based on my university and can vary though. This timeframe is so you have had a good amount of time to get to grips with your research, but still have time to make changes if needed. The panel at Lancaster is conducted by two academics who are not your supervisors, with at least one being somewhat familiar with your rough area of work, so they can give informed feedback based on the field.

So now, that we know when it is, a reasonable question would be why do we need it and what does it look for? The answer to this is that despite the large amounts of pressure people can feel doing this panel it is incredibly important and useful. It is one of the only occasions that someone not involved in the research takes a detailed look at what you have been doing. The purpose of this panel is to allow an academic to look at everything you have done and ask questions. These will help them understand exactly what you are doing, what you are looking at, what you are hoping for and why you are doing it. These are similar questions to what you get in your viva, and that is the point of it. The panel allows your department to go through everything in extreme detail and get an idea of if you will be able to pass a viva. This means examining your research questions, looking at your plan and timeline and considering the contribution you are hoping to make to make sure you have the best possible chance of succeeding in your course.

One of the things that this tends to mean, and something I noticed in the leadup to my own panel is that academics and students have very different perspectives on the panels. Academics are very reassuring and tell you the panel is really useful and you will be fine, students however will warn you that it is one of the most brutal things you will ever endure. This is because while the intent is to help, the method is you doing a presentation on the work you are presumably passionate about and have put a lot of work into, and having two academics tearing it apart for any mistakes or issues and to point out any flaws and make you defend your choices and ideas, so yeah, it’s quite intense. It is also why I haven’t managed to do any blog posts as even though my panel was in February, it took me a while to recover from the mental experience.

While this may sound awful it is still a good thing, as like my supervisor said, it is better to have these brutal experiences and questions now, rather than at the viva at the end.

So, what was my experience like? Well for about a month before the panel I spent a lot of time getting ready, this included making a 20 minute presentation on what I had been doing and what I hoped to achieve, writing up some documents on methodologies I had been using on some studies and putting together any other writing I had to give to the panel ahead of time so they could go through it and have an idea of what to expect. During this time, I did several run throughs of the presentation with peers and academics to fine tune it, move stuff around and make sure I was as ready as I could be for the presentation.

On the day itself, I got to the room around 30 minutes early so I could make sure the tech was working and mentally prepare myself and do a last run through of my notes. The panellists arrived and we had a brief hello before getting into it. I gave a 20 minute presentation first talking about my research questions and ideas and the background of my topic, then I talked about the work I had already done and any results or findings, before getting onto what I had planned to do next to build on the work and finally I discussed what I hoped for my contribution of knowledge to be and how it would improve the field. I hadn’t actually done a presentation this long before and was initially worried about how I would fill the time, but as I was making it and practicing I realized I would definitely have the opposite problem as 16 months of work is a lot to fit in 20 minutes. Once this was done (and I had caught my breath a bit) we got into the questions.

The questions are the bit a lot of students would ideally like to skip, as it is where the earlier mentioned tearing apart takes place. They asked me questions about the venues I wanted to publish my work, the scope of what I was looking at, my understanding of the cognitive impact of ADHD, the methods I was planning and using, the relevance of what I had found so far and every other detail found in my work. This can feel like a really unpleasant and hostile experience, but it is incredibly important to stay calm and engage positively with the questions so you can get the most information and feedback out of the experience.

Once this is done, congrats you have finished your panel. You leave the room (probably go and collapse somewhere) and the academics have a chat, compare notes and make their recommendations to the department. This can take various lengths of time, especially as sometimes the panel will want to talk to your supervisors after the panel before submitting their results. Once this is done you usually get the feedback within a couple of weeks which will also have the results of your panel.

There are a few ways the results can go, but no matter what you get, you will also have feedback on what you need to do to improve your work and maximise your chance of passing your PhD. First, you can pass, which is great, that means your work looks like it is on track to be successful and the department and panel is happy with what you are producing. Second option is a deferral, this is where you haven’t passed or failed, it looks like you have done some good work so far, but there are some issues that need to be addressed to make sure your work will be viable. Third is you can be downgraded, and this is the first fail option. A downgrade is when you have done good work, but it will not be enough to earn a PhD, and so you instead get downgraded to a masters. In this scenario you will writeup a masters dissertation on what you have done and defend it at another panel and be awarded a masters level research qualification. The final outcome, which is quite rare, is a fail. This only happens when the work you have done is a very poor quality and doesn’t warrant being awarded anything.

Which leads me to announcing how I did, drum roll please………….. I got a deferral!

Yes, I know, not exactly a massive success, but it is not exactly a bad thing. What happens now is that I will need to redo my panel around August and see if I have managed to improve my work inline with the recommendations that the panel gave. It is also important to note that you only get two attempts at your confirmation panel, which means if you don’t pass the second time, your only options are fail or being downgraded (again, no pressure right). My main feedback was around the scope of the work and it being too broad and not fully achievable in the timeline, which is a fair description as looking at ADHD in education in general is quite a significant task. Instead, I got advice to narrow the focus and look at specific activities and how to support students within those specific activities, which is something I have been working on since, and will likely write another post about down the line.

There are a few reasons someone might not pass though, for me it was about the direction and scope of the research, for some other people it was about the strength of their writing or some of their plans. But regardless, it is important to remember that not passing first time doesn’t mean what you have done so far is bad, it just means if you want to have your best chance at getting the PhD you have some major changes that need to be made, but the panel think you have what it takes to hopefully make them.

A confirmation panel is an incredibly difficult and mentally challenging experience, but it was one of the moments that made me realise a PhD is not an easy task, you are making a contribution to your field that no one else has made before and becoming an expert in what you do. So, if you are planning to do a PhD or have your own panel coming up, it’s healthy and smart to be a bit afraid and stressed, but you also need to remember that the people on that panel have one job, help you figure out the best way forward for you.

So, that is the first blog post of 2024 done. I will hopefully be back to doing one a month, partly as I am going to write a few to give me some buffer room for when my workload gets too much again. But as always thanks for reading and if you want to know any more about PhD life or anything in this post, feel free to get in touch.

https://lukehalpinresearch.com/2023/02/24/a-guide-of-terms-for-this-blog/