DIPLOMA PROJECT ONLINE DEFENSE: PLATFORM, TOOLS, PRESENTATION

Diploma project presentation and defense are key steps towards earning a diploma of advanced studies. Inasmuch as a diploma project demonstrates level of graduating student’s professional training, their abilities to use gained knowledge for resolving practical tasks. Also, it demonstrates obtained professional competences, abilities of critical and creative thinking, ability to defend their view about the finished project. Nevertheless, a diploma project should be not only finished but defensed. A graduating student defenses their diploma project through presentation and speech.

Traditional diploma defenses in Ukrainian higher educational institutes take place in auditoriums. Students come at the podiums and make their speeches which are followed by the illustrated presentations. But in case of COVID-19 quarantine measures this traditional public defense has been changed: in 2020 graduating bachelors defensed their diploma projects online through video link platforms and videoconferencing for the first time. The diploma project online defense became a kind of experiment in Ukrainian higher educational system.

Nowadays online diploma presentation is not just one of alternatives under pandemic conditions, but a key communication format in the future. The forced changes help students defense their projects. Also, this situation gives them an opportunity to develop their skills of online speeches and presentations and strengthen their defense speeches with the multimedia presentations.

The aim of the article is research of specific nature of bachelor’s degree diploma online defense under Advertising and Public Relations educational and professional program as a bilateral case between Borys Grinchenko Kyiv University and Taras Shevchenko National University of Kyiv.

Materials of the given research answer following questions: how to adept to a new distance format; how to present a project through online tools; which platform (Zoom, ClickMeeting or Hangouts) should be chosen for diploma projects online defense; which tools are the most appropriate for creating of original multimedia presentations; what kind of structure/composition a presentation should have got.

The research results confirm that online defenses were successful, and this new format didn’t hinder students to present their diploma projects meaningfully and constructively.

The chosen platforms ensured continuous two-way communication between the students and the examination committee members.

We suppose this practice will be the impetus for implementation of diploma projects public defense online translation in Ukrainian higher educational institutes. Such kind of defenses through modern computer technologies and Internet will be allowed to those students who wish. This innovative format of diploma online defense will allow employers to evaluate the level of future specialists’ professional knowledge and skills through the prism of their diploma projects.