Set oral exam date and time

Based on the initial examiners' reports for an HDR candidate required to undertake an oral examination, the Dean of the Graduate will either recommend that the oral exam proceeds or that the candidated receive the examination outcome. If the oral examination is to proceed, the Graduate School will raise a UniTask for the Chair of Examiners to schedule the oral examination date and time.

The process for setting up and completing Oral exam is shown in the diagram below.

As Chair, you will receive a notification of the task via email with a direct link to access it. You will also be able to access the task via your my.UQ dashboard.

Within this task you can:

Establish the duration of the oral examination
Establish the date range in which the examination will take place
Nominate potential dates and times for the examination (with inbuilt time zone conversion)
Poll examiners on their availability
Add more dates and times, if needed
Review examiner responses to poll
Confirm date and time for oral examination
Notify candidate and examiners of confirmed date and time of oral examination

Step 1: Set exam duration and date range

Step 2: Add the choice of date/time

A new row must be added for each date and time combination you wish to poll examiners for. You only need to enter the date and the proposed start time; the end time will automatically be populated based on the oral examination duration.

When you enter a date and time combination, the blue box below will display the date/s and time/s in each time zone.

To add a date and time combination to the poll, click the “Add” button. An added date and time combination will appear in a table below the blue time zone box. You can remove date and time combinations by clicking the “Remove” button.

There is not a limit on the number of combinations you can add.

To finalise the poll and send the notification to the examiners, click the “Submit” button.

Examiners will respond to the poll by selecting the date and time combinations that suit them. If none are available then they can comment with alternative date and time combinations.

Once both examiners have responded you will receive a notification, via email, to review the responses. You will also be able to access the task via your my.UQ dashboard.

Step 3: Review examiners’ responses

You will be able to review the examiners’ responses to the poll in the Date/time table.

Any comments from examiners can be found in the “Most recent comment” section or in the “History” tab. It is here that examiners can nominate alternative times.

If you need to add new date and time combinations and re-poll examiners, repeat Step 3.

Once you click the “Submit” button, the examiners will be asked to provide responses to the new poll. You will be notified via email once both examiners have provided their responses.

Step 4: Confirm date and time

When you have determined a suitable date and time combination, check the “Check this box when you are ready to approve a date/time combination” box.

This will add an additional column to the table where you can select the date and time combination you want to approve. You will see a green box confirming your choice of date/time combination.

For a video demonstration of the above process, click the image below:

Step 5: Add Zoom and location details

When you select the appropriate date and time combination to confirm, some additional fields will appear. These allow you to add a Zoom link and/or room details for the oral examination.

For advice on how to set up a Zoom meeting or book a room at UQ please visit the below resources:

Once you have finalised the date/time combination and provided the Zoom link and/or room details, click the “Submit” button.

An email notification will be sent to the candidate, examiners and Chair of Examiners, confirming the date and time of the oral examination and providing the Zoom link and/or the room details. An Outlook calendar widget will be included in the email so the oral examination can be imported into an Outlook calendar.