TIPS TO DEFEND FINAL YEAR PROJECT WITH SMILE FACES By Clement Okon - 23rd October, 2018. Email: clemdon.edu@gmail.com

A research project is an expansion on past work in the field. Research is defined as the process of arriving at dependable solutions to identified problems, through the planned and systematic collection, analysis and interpretation of data.

Project in general is an individual or collaborative enterprise, possibly involved in research or design work that is carefully planned, usually by a student or project team to achieve a particular aim.

Here, the following areas will be focused on especially for the final year students that want to defend their project with smile faces;

1.       Prepare For Questions: If you are preparing for questions that may be asked during your defense, then your answers will flow smoothly and effectively. This will prove your knowledge on the subject, and strengthening your argument. Ask friends and family, read your work for them to listen to your presentation, and write down questions. You may be lucky the panel will ask you those or similar questions you have already prepared on.

2.       Strong Summary: Summarizing your chapters will help keep your audience focused because it is easy for a mind to drift, so providing summaries will ensure your panel will follow along, even if they lose focus for a brief moment. Visual aides, such as graphs and power-point presentations can be very helpful. If you are going to use these, make sure you will practice your presentation with them.

3.       Be Confident in Your Project Work: Not knowing your topic inside out will cause you to struggle and ultimately fail with your defense. You need to know the subject from every angle to ensure you are fully prepared for any question that may come your way. Note some students do forget their topic.

4.       Conclusion: Reinforce your findings to conclude your defense. The final of your presentation should focus on proving the work that has been done. You may need to recap on what has changed and remained unchanged, if is necessary.

5.       Listen: Before you get defensive or recite a particular answer, make sure you truly understand the question being asked. Being a good listener is an important quality, because providing an inaccurate or off-topic answer will also weaken the validity of your work. If you don’t know the answer, reply that you don’t have the information available to provide an accurate answer. It is highly likely that the panel knows the answer to that particular question you were being asked and so they will know that the one you are providing is an incorrect answer. Also you shouldn’t be shy in asking the panel for a question to be repeated if you didn’t get it well, this will build your confidence in the approach to take with your response.

6.       Do Adequate Research on Your Topic: Before defending your project, you should source for similar materials on your topic, focus on how the problems were identified and addressed. Identify your keywords, variables, background of the study and also be able to explain in detail your abstract and conclusion off-hand before your defense date.

7.       Know Your Motivation For Your Project: Most final year students in Nigeria defending their projects do not perform well because they fail to identify their motives for their study. The motivation for your project is probably the first answer to any questions you may be asked in the defense hall or room. Before a research is undertaken, there is usually a problem to solve. The desire to solve that problem will become your motivation for the study. Do not use money to research without putting in your effort, your passion to solve a problem should be your motivation towards your studies. Motivation for the study is the best to apply in questions like “why undertake this study? Tell us about your work” so if you were using money to write your project, how will you tell the panel about your motivation towards your work?

8.       Professional Discussion on Your Project Topic: Make your friends your panel members, and defend in front of them. Tell them to criticize and ask you numerous questions. With this little training you will be tuning your mind set for what a defense hall will look like. You can also seek professional help before defense date.