By David Kissa Ocama
PhD student under REFOREST Programme at Sokoine University of Agriculture
I am in my fourth year of PhD study in Forest Science at Sokoine University of Agriculture. I am a Forester with specialty in Silviculture and Forest Ecology. The Refereed Seminar organised by the College’s Postgraduate Committee at SUA was a momentous opportunity to share my research findings with a large audience of academia. Unlike other seminar presentations, this particular one is examinable and it heightens the academic pressure on a student to prepare adequately in order to be equipped with the subject matter, presentation and Psychomotor skills. The environment was conducive for me to share my findings and fortunately, the comments from the examiners and the audience have helped me to gain additional insights into my work which is currently under development for publication.
The most interesting moment was when academic staff of different research disciplines were able to convey to students the need to generate meaningful information for policy development that can be disseminated to wider stakeholders.
Personally, I have learnt quite a number of things that can also help future PhD students;
- Time management was very crucial during any presentation and once, you don’t manage it well then it can create a moment of confusion or it can make a student to attract more unnecessary questions which could have been addressed if the audience went through the whole presentation.
- Academic forum e.g. Seminar series are always very exciting and there is need for students to be tolerant and ready to accept any comment whether positive or negative because they are meant to align our perceptions but also boost our critical reasoning so as to be able to make informed decisions.
- I noticed that, the Chairs of these Seminar sessions have a big role to play when in moderating the sessions. My assessment of the concluded seminar session was that some were very interactive and balanced in terms of the students facing off with the audience; suppressive i.e. some students were asked more questions; and irresponsive i.e. some students had challenges responding to some questions. Hence, the need to carefully select personalities to moderate such seminar presentations in order to create a balanced and informative sessions.
