Guest Post: From a Travel Grant Recipient

[This post is from Vincent Itai Tanyanyiwa, a lecturer at Zimbabwe Open University. With support of an AuthorAID travel grant, Vincent attended the Distance Education and Teacher Education in Africa (DETA) Conference, which took place in Mauritius in July 2015. He also attended a pre-conference workshop on academic communication skills. This guest post focuses on the pre-conference workshop. Thank you, Vincent! —Barbara]

The workshop “Enhancing academic communication skills—Sharing your research: getting your messages across” was facilitated by Prof Rinelle Evans of the University of Pretoria, South Africa, and Dr Hyleen Mariaye of the Mauritius Institute of Education. It was an interactive workshop that provided guidance to academics and teachers wishing to hone their presentation and writing skills.

As an academic, it is essential that one does justice to oneself and one’s institution by sharing expert knowledge in a professional manner. This could be done either by submitting research findings as an academic article to a peer-reviewed journal or by sharing research at a public forum, such as a conference or seminar.

The workshop included the following topics:

• understanding your message: elements of communication
• advertising your message: writing an abstract
• structuring your message: selecting and sequencing content
• packaging your message: design principles of PowerPoint
• delivering your message: effective presentation skills
• defending your message: question and answer sessions

In addition, the workshop discussed selecting an appropriate journal and writing for an international audience in accordance with the standards and norms of academia. It also identified various publication opportunities on the African continent.

Small issues such as dressing and appearance during presentations were also discussed. An example was the need to wear comfortable, sufficiently loose clothes and shoes.

Apart from this conference being very successful, I was able to explore Mauritius, one of the most popular tourist destinations in Africa. Once again, thank you so much, AuthorAID/INASP, for the travel grant.