Defense of distance doctoral theses at the EID

Christian Lopez Manzano

The Rey Juan Carlos University does not stop, it works in a different way. This is the slogan under which the University is operating these days. All the services and departments of the URJC have begun to function telematically through the Internet with the aim that the state of alarm and confinement affect students and the rest of the members of the university community as little as possible. PDI and PAS.

Based on this idea of ​​continuing with all the possible activity of the institution, the Rey Juan Carlos University is offering the possibility of electronically defending doctoral theses to those doctoral students who had their defense dated in these months. The URJC International Doctoral School (EID) offers this service with the intention of altering the planning of doctoral students as little as possible: “we have enabled this possibility so that those doctoral students who had a date to defend their thesis and want to do so can do so ”, explains Carolina San Martín, director of the EID. "It is voluntary: those who prefer to wait and defend their doctoral thesis in person will also be able to do so without any problem," says San Martín.

As soon as the University suspended its face-to-face activity, the EID began working to establish a thesis defense protocol by videoconference using the Virtual Classroom available to the URJC. Thanks to the coordinated work of the International Doctoral School, the Center for Innovation in Digital Education: URJC Online and the Vice Presidents for Quality and Good Governance, Postgraduate and Academic Planning, a technical procedure has been designed to be able to carry out doctoral thesis defenses telematically. “Thanks to the work of URJC Online we are able to adapt to this situation in the best possible way” says San Martín, who wanted to recognize the important work of the University department: “they are doing an enormous job”.

This system, which is called the "Exceptional procedure for the reading and defense of doctoral theses remotely, due to the measures adopted by COVID-19", has the purpose that the activity of evaluation and defense of doctoral theses can be carried out with as normally as possible during the period of suspension of face-to-face academic activities. Likewise, it guarantees the character of a public session of the act of evaluation and defense, the accreditation of the identity of the doctoral student and their interaction with the court.

At the moment, two remote doctoral thesis defenses have been carried out: one on March 17 and the other this Monday, March 23. Both have developed with total normality and have allowed doctoral students to defend their doctoral thesis without any alteration. From the EID, they indicate that "this option will be maintained until the situation ends" and that "all doctoral students who were summoned to defend their thesis will be able to do so without problem".