Guidelines for Members of the Advisory Committee
It is recommended that members of the advisory committee familiarize themselves with these guidelines before assessing the exercises for the Comprehensive Assessment process
General instructions and philosophy: The purpose of the comprehensive assessment is to emphasize and gauge the development of skills needed to succeed as a PhD student. The comprehensive process is not intended to be an exam. Instead, this comprehensive assessment process is intended to be formative, and through the exercises, students are assessed on their depth and breadth of knowledge within their domain of study, their ability to think critically and evaluate relevant literature, their understanding of key concepts and methods in their domain of study, and their ability to express scientific thoughts in a written and verbal manner.
The comprehensive assessment process is a milestone that must be completed for their degree. If, through the comprehensive assessment process, members of the advisory committee feel that there are substantial deficiencies in any of the skillsets mentioned above, the student is given guidance and an opportunity to remediate these deficiencies by repeating any or all of the exercises. Granting of the milestone can be withheld until the advisory committee feels that student has satisfied the requirements of each exercise. If the student displays a repeated inability to remediate deficiencies, or if new deficiencies emerge, then the advisory committee can evaluate the student’s progress relative to the expected completion time for a PhD student.
If any exercise is unsuccessful after two attempts, the student may need to meet with the Director to determine a course of action.
Exercise #1: Domain Specific Essay: Through this exercise, the student should demonstrate scientific writing skills and breadth and depth of knowledge within their area of area of study. Members of the advisory committee should review this written work as they would a review at a standard journal. Considerations can include (but are not limited to) whether the student has sufficiently assessed the work in relevant areas, and whether the scientific writing is clear and logical. The student was to have produced this work independently with minimal input from supervisors, so the essay should be viewed as a first draft. While it is not required to achieve the milestone, the student may wish to work with their supervisor(s) to continue to develop this work into a submitted review, so feedback from members of the advisory committee can be invaluable in pointing out the area(s) that would benefit from further development.
Exercise #2: Public Communication Essay: This is an exercise in public communication in written form. The topic area is one where the student is developing expertise, so they should be capable of conveying complex scientific topics to a more generalist audience. There are multiple options for the form of this essay – it could be as a “journal club” article about a recently published paper, or it could be an article for a lay audience (e.g., a “Dorsal Column” article, suitable for distribution at a library). In either case, the role of the advisory committee member is to provide feedback on how effectively the student conveyed the message. For example, was it written at the appropriate level for the target audience? This work is also intended as a first draft only. As with Exercise #1, submission is not required to achieve the milestone, although the student may wish to integrate feedback from the advisory committee to develop the work for eventual submission.
Exercise #3: Chalk Talk: This is an exercise in verbal communication that allows the advisory committee to probe the depth of the student’s knowledge, critical thinking skills, and their ability to think on their feet. The student is to have prepared a 30-minute dynamic presentation on a whiteboard but is expecting members of the advisory committee meeting to ask questions during the chalk talk. The chair of the advisory committee meeting is to cap the total time for the chalk talk at 45-minutes. When providing feedback to the student, members of the advisory committee can consider how succinctly the student answered a given question, and/or whether the student displayed the depth of knowledge on a given topic that would be expected at a PhD defence. Members of the advisory committee may also wish to share areas that the student should look into, and/or strategies for how to verbally answer scientific questions.
Final Evaluation: At the end of the Comprehensive Assessment meeting, the chair of the advisory committee (i.e., the program representative) will ask for feedback to be provided to the student in written and verbal form on all exercises. Members of the advisory committee can also provide such feedback more informally at the end of this meeting.
The decision as to whether a student should repeat a given exercise should be guided by whether doing so would be in the best interest of the student’s continuing development. The chair of the advisory committee can guide discussions along these lines, should there be any disagreement amongst the members of the advisory committee. It is expected that the student repeats any required exercise(s) with their committee within 6-8 weeks.
The written feedback should be recorded by the chair on the PhD Comprehensive Assessment Meeting Report, which is then emailed to the Neuroscience Office at neuroscience@uwo.ca, and to the student.
If any exercise is unsuccessful after two attempts, the student may need to meet with the Director to determine a course of action. The inability to satisfactorily complete all three exercises would normally result in withdrawal from the graduate program.
