A three-day ALL-IN technical workshop, under the tutelage of Lilongwe University of Agriculture and Natural Resources (LUANAR), designed as a refresher or a jumpstart for students and early researchers involved in technical writing has been held at the Crossroads Hotel in Lilongwe, Malawi.
The LUANAR ALL-IN project writing workshop was aimed at improving writing skills such as clarity, conciseness and organization, increasing the ability to write for different audiences and purposes as well as providing a better understanding of the value of technical writing across a range of sectors and professions.
The workshop was facilitated by Limbikani Matumba, a Professor of Food Technology and Nutrition and Director of Research and Outreach at LUANAR-NRC College. He covered a range of topics from manuscript and article development, different types of articles and reviews, peer reviews and software and tools that aid in scientific and technical writing.
PARTICIPANTS
26 participants (13 males and 13 females) consisting 18 graduate students and 8 researchers from LUANAR attended the workshop.
On the first day, Professor Matumba discussed the importance of proper formatting for scientific documents and the different stages and components of a manuscript or article. He followed up on the second day focusing on systematic and meta-analysis reviews, with participants writing an introduction for an article of their choice and discussing the difference between rapid systematic reviews and meta-analyses.
On the final day, participants engaged in peer reviews of their introductions, followed by a plenary session led by Dr. Elizabeth Bandason, Senior Lecturer (Insect Neuroscientist) at LUANAR-Bunda College.
IMPACT
The LUANAR ALL-IN writing workshop was a valuable experience for participants;
