Picture: Resources persons for the seminar including the Dean of the Graduate School Dr. Patricia Owusu-Darko (sitted left).
The Graduate School of Kumasi Technical University has held a seminar for graduate students to educate them in the selection of their research topics, presentation skills, writing skills, plagiarism issues and student-supervisor relationships.
The Director of the School of Graduate Studies, Dr. Patricia Darko who chaired the programme, mentioned that over the years, the School of Graduate Studies had put measures and structures in place to facilitate the graduation rate of students. She added that the Graduate School would continue to ensure that its students produce quality thesis and, thus, advised students to come out from the seminar with different mindset towards research. She took participants through presentation skills. She further made it known that students who had keenly participated in such seminars have benefited tremendously and have enjoyed their graduate school experience. She urged the participants to ask constructive questions and contribute to the discussions, and be prepared to learn from the research seminars to help in their final presentation.
On her part Ing. Dr. Abena Obiri Yeboah, the Dean of the Faculty of Engineering and Technology took participants through “technical report writing” which is one of the main forms of communication in engineering.
Presenting on the topic “Library and Plagiarism”, Dr. Kwabena Osei Kuffour Adjei the Librarian of KsTU, explained that the ability to identify a gap reflects a person’s understanding of the knowledge in their discipline, helps to reduce the duplication of research work and also minimizes the chances of plagiarism.
Dr. Smart A. Sarpong, a Senior Research Fellow from the Centre for Social Science Research of KsTU emphasised that more reading, and reading materials about systematic reviews, content analysis reports, meta-analysis reports as well as journals were required to help in conducting research at the postgraduate level.
A Senior Lecturer from the Faculty of Entrepreneurship and Enterprise Development (FEED), Dr. Solomon Kwarteng Forkuo, gave out some entrepreneurship strategies postgraduate students could engage in and added that there should be clear procedures with support systems outlined for students who wish to change a supervisor within the structure of the University for the success of postgraduate studies. He also advised that supervisors should show interest in their students’ well-being. The workshop was held at the MTech lecture hall and broadcasted via zoom.