Africa Center of Excellence for Climate Smart Agriculture and Biodiversity Conservation has successfully conducted training workshop for consecutive three days from 29th-31st March 2023. The training was offered to Cohort 6 students who are newly admitted to the Center for their postgraduate scholarship in three programs: PhD in Climate Smart Agriculture, MSc in Climate Smart Agriculture and MSc in Biodiversity Conservation. About 25 students have been participated on th training which has covered different issues of importance to postgraduate scholarship such as Digital Information Literacy, Reference Management and R research Tool.
The training has got its commencement with the opening speech of Dr. Bobe Bedadi, deputy center leader and Training and Research head of the Center Dr. Bobe who has introduced the major contents of the training workshop and its objectives, indicating that the training on the aforementioned topics is given to every new entry of the Center on a year base. Dr. Bobe notes that the training has an invaluable importance for research students of the center since it takes place right before the beginnings of class sessions. As to him, the students shall easily use the knowledge and skills they get from the training to work different term papers and their thesis research. He added that, as information and education is getting digital and the virtual learning platform is becoming a preference of the time in today’s world, getting trained in digital and information literacy is a great opportunity.
The training was offered by Instructors and Experts from different fields studies. Mr.Tilahun Shiferaw, a director Library and information service, Mr. Ashenafi Tulu from the department of Information Science, and Mr. Kindu Kebede from the Department of Statistics have offered the trainings. According to Mr. Tilahun Shiferaw, Information Literacy and Reference management training was designed to help researchers, and postgraduate students to acquire intellectual, critical and logical skills to access, evaluate and use information as effectively as possible.
The training has covered topics of Information literacy such as search strategies, evaluating information, using open access resources, maintaining scholarly presence online, and reference management and citation tools using Mendeley and Zotero, and R research tool. The participants of the training have expressed their ideas, and comments on the training sessions during the closing remarks. They expressed that it was very good opportunity for them that they are introduced to the skills before they start their coursework. They stressed that the training on information literacy skills comprehensive, detailed, and very relevant to their knowledge and skills needs.
The Center’s Leader Professor Mengistu Urge says in his closing remarks that the trainings are very crucial for postgraduate students to support you in the course of your research endeavors. He also commented the center to organize related Trainings on other Software that are equally important as R tool. Finally, he acknowledged the participants of the training and all ACE Climate SABC’s managing staff who coordinated the training to become successful.
