PROFESSIONAL TECHNICAL WRITING TRAINING 25-26 April, 2016

Venue: Veterinary Conference Hall, AFU, Rampur, Chitwan

Organized by: Collaborative Partner:

Agriculture Student Liaison Forum Democratic Agriculturists’ Association- Nepal

(ASLF) (DAAN)

AFU, Rampur, Chitwan

Supported by:

Agriculture and Forestry University (AFU)

Rampur, Chitwan, Nepal

FINAL PROGRAM REPORT

BACKGROUND OF THE TRAINING:

Graduate and Undergraduate students who are the backbone for the research, extension, policy

making and entrepreneurship are forced to the outdoor countries because of the theoretical and

traditional method of teaching and due to the big maze of getting relevant information. Lack of

technical knowledge on the critical writing and technology has led to the knowledge, research

and entrepreneurial gap. As a result, a lot of national and international opportunities, grants and

scholarship opportunities go in vain. So the future agriculturists should be trained with accessing

the information, the recent news/update and opportunities, the source of funding and grants

and the one to concern for technical backstopping.

In today’s world of modernization and Globalization, it is important to produce the technology

friendly agricultural graduates with critical thinking and writing proficiency which would aid them

discover opportunities in the relevant field, to invest in greater connectivity and develop

technical capacity in order to support the innovative agriculture development.

The Technical Writing training program was mainly targeted to the senior batch students from

the Agriculture and Forestry University as they are the latest one to seek the grants, opportunities

in their related field of interest in professional world. All the undergraduate and graduate

students from the field of Agriculture, Veterinary Science and Animal Husbandry, Fisheries and

Forestry were called for application for the training program.

OBJECTIVES:

The overall objective of the training was to facilitate the participants in identifying the key

practices for developing the effective and successful Technical papers in the agriculture field.

The other specific objectives of the program were:

To understand the types of information that are must for every technical papers.

Recognize the crucial elements of the Technical Paper and how they fit together.

To be able to write a strong journal papers and identify the key factors for selecting the

publishers.

To understand the Citation and APA referencing techniques currently being employed in

Agriculture and Forestry University.

To be able to prepare a strong Curriculum vitae and Resume for justifying the suitability

of the candidate on relevant opportunities.

To be able to prepare a Logical Framework Table for the Project.

DISCUSSIONS AND TRAINING ACTIVITIES:

The Call for Participation notice was published on 8th of Baisakh, 2073 and applications were

closed on 11th of Baisakh,11.59 pm. A list of 42 participants and the waiting list was published on

12th of Baisakh and the participants were finalized through registration by the same day.

The training program started at 10.40 am on 13th of Baisakh with the formal opening ceremony

under the chairmanship of Mr. Sujan Paudel, President, ASLF, Rampur. Prof. Dr. Ishwari Prasad

Dhakal, Vice - Chancellor of Agriculture and Forestry University was invited as the Chief guest. Dr.

Surya Prasad Poudel, President, DAAN was chaired as special guest of the opening ceremony. Dr.

Suryakanta Ghimire, founding registrar, AFU and Prof. Dr. Dilli Ram Baral, Dean, FOA, AFU were

also invited as special guests. Mrs. Rama Paudel (Secretary General, DAAN), Mr. Ram Ghimire

(Senior Scientist, National Goat Research Program), Mr. Ramhari Timilsina (Member, DAAN), Mr.

Saroj Regmi (Member, DAAN) and Mr. Madan Poudel (President, AgriYouthNepal) were chaired

as other guests. All the guests delivered their speeches and participants and organizers were

encouraged by the chief guest and special guests. The formal program was ended by the speech

of the chairman Mr. Sujan Paudel. The program was hosted by Mr. Dikshit Poudel, Secretary,

ASLF, Rampur.

The informal program or the training session was initiated by the presentation of the resource

person Mrs. Rama Paudel. The introduction of all 47 participants) that were selected on first

come first basis along with the committee members was done. The expectations of the

participants from the training was also noted by Mrs. Paudel. The methods of preparing some

sound technical writings and the way one can start their writing career was discussed in the

session. She made everybody clear that writing was not easy and one must practice regularly to

create a fine piece of writing. Mrs. Paudel even discussed about the purposes of writing,

essentials of a good writing and the things one need to acquire to be a good writer. The IMRAD

format of writing was also included in her session. Her experiences and exciting stories related

to scientific writing trend in Nepal and other countries were shared in the program. She

highlighted the importance of revising and editing the scientific writing. Almost all the

fundamentals of a scientific writing including abstract was covered by her session. The session

that ran for ninety minutes was well received by the trainees. Her session ended at 1:20 P.M. Her

personal experience sharing and the generalized content laid out the strong foundation of the

program.

After the first session, the detailed session about the Research Proposal Writing was carried out

by our Chief Resource Person Dr. Surya Prasad Paudel (Senior Livestock Development Officer,

President DAAN). He commenced the session encouraging the participants to be authentic and

genuine to their idea while writing as our ideas are under review by the experts. Important factors

of a proposal writing like time and cost consideration was perfectly dealt in the session. The

major highlight of the session of Mr. Paudel was the Group exercise session. After sixty minutes

of presentation, Dr. Paudel divided the participants into six groups, each consisting 7-8 members

and gave each group a theme to prepare a research proposal. The practical session followed by

the theoretical session aided in brushing up and refining the knowledge acquired by the

participants previously. The themes given to the groups were:

•Climate change and agriculture

•Food and nutrition Security

•Disease and Pest Management

•Use of wild crops

•Human Wildlife Conflicts

•Nutrient Management

After the 30 minutes’ tiffin break, Mr. Paudel facilitated the brainstorming of the ideas with each

of the groups and dealt with the queries of each of the participants. His incredible energy level,

commitment and devotion for the participant is highly admirable and creditable. His rendition of

ideas to participants in a group wise manner was found to be very fruitful. After about 90 minutes

of highly fruitful practical discussion session, all six groups came up with their proposals. A

representative from each group presented their proposals which was commented and edited by

the Resource person himself. Expertise is gained after regular practice and devotion but the

exercise, discussions and brainstorming of ideas in the second session led to the development of

strong conceptual framework in the participants. All credit goes to Dr. Paudel.

For the proportionate development of the agricultural sector in the country, it is important that

all of its component i.e., planning, research, education and Extension have a strong interlinkage

among each other. The session of Dr. Paudel developed a good understanding among the

students about the prerequisite for a strong research proposal to be in accordance with the

developmental institutions in the country.

The First day was marked off with the presentation of Certificate of Appreciation to Mrs. Rama

Paudel and Dr. Surya Prasad Paudel by the President of ASLF, Sujan Paudel.

In summary, the participants learned about procedures for developing a strong Research

proposal and they were further clarified about the topic due to the exercise session.

It is important we get an opportunity that is best suited to our skills and activities. A good CV

highlighting our achievements, activities, skills may not give u a job, but a bad one can surely cost

u a job. The first session of 2nd Day by Mr. Madan Poudel focused on preparing a strong CV for

the career. He gave the participants information about the things that are to be considered for

developing a strong CV and reiterated the differences between the CV and resume. He discussed

about selling the ideas and skills to the outer world. He even talked about transferable skills and

how one can sharpen their skills and use it to compete in a professional manner. The participants

were motivated to use social media tools like LinkedIn to develop their professional career. The

structure of a professional e-mail was also included in the presentation. The kind of salutation

for the particular level of personnel was made clear in the presentation. The presentation of Mr.

Poudel that ended at 11:30 A.M motivated all the participants to stay away from deviations and

focus on developing professionalism.

The second session of the second day was carried by Mr. Ram Ghimire, Senior Scientist, National

Goat Research Program where he talked about logical framework. The importance of logical

framework in a proposal was properly emphasized in the session. Mr. Ghimire explained how a

logical framework helps to organize our thinking and leads us to a successful outcome. Difference

between goals, purpose, activities and output was clarified in the session. The difference in

outcome and output was described by Mr. Poudel. Different assumptions to be made for risk

assessment was also mentioned. All the trainees were even warned about killer assumption that

may just ruin an otherwise good proposal. Many queries raised in the session showed that the

session was to the liking of the participants. The session ended at 1:30 P.M.

The findings and discovery that led to advancement and betterment of the human mankind is

due to the tireless efforts of the researchers. We have right to access their information but they

must be credited as per the intellectual property rights. That’s where our third session by Dr.

Durga Devkota (Associate Professor, AFU) on Citation and Referencing came into play. Her

session began with the briefing of the situational analysis of the present conditions taking place

in Agriculture and Forestry University in Masters and PhD level. She also described the features

of a good Literature review. After lighting on the significance of review, she started talking about

the procedures for reviewing of Literature. Within it, she covered the topics such as Format of

the review, When and why to use citation and Referencing, about the Ampersand, the use of

Digital Object Identifier. The session proved to be extremely important part for the participants

who are close to the LEE program in their final year.

The final session on the Essence of Journal Writing and Publishing was carried out by Dr. Krishna

Kaphle (Associate Professor, IAAS, TU). In the short motivational session, Dr. Kaphle covered the

topics answering Where to publish journals? He mentioned the important points on how to write

the titles, what not to forget and what to include. He highlighted the importance of Proper

spelling, grammar keywords (Index term). Important points on Graphs, word limits, style

instructed and preciseness of the writing were mentioned. Plagiarism was discouraged and

participants were encouraged to Name all those who deserve to be on Acknowledgement. The

key statement of the session was “Manuscript writing is no theory. Writing is an art.”

The final moments of the Training Program were embellished by the motivational words,

knowledge and experience of Prof. Dr. Nabaraj Devkota about the General aspects of Technical

Writing which was really encouraging and fruitful to the participants.

The closing ceremony of the Professional Technical Writing Program was under the chairmanship

of Mr. Sujan Paudel, President, ASLF, Rampur. Prof. Ishwari Chandra Prakash Tiwari (Dean,

Faculty of Animal Science, Veterinary Science and Fisheries) was invited as Chief Guest. Prof. Dr.

Nabaraj Devkota (Director, Directorate of Research and Extension, AFU) and Prof. Dr. Mohan

Sharma (Director, Office of Continuing Education Centre, AFU) were chaired as the special guest

of the closing ceremony. Dr. Krishna Kaphle, Dr. Durga Devkota, Ram Ghimire, Ram Hari Timislina,

Madan Poudel were chaired as the Guest of the Program. Ms. Pramisa Thapaliya shared her

experiences during the Two Days Training program. The Certificate of Participation and The

Certificate of Appreciation was awarded by the Chief Guest, Special Guests to the Participants

and Resource Persons respectively. All the Guests, Special Guests and Chief Guest delivered their

speech and encouraged the initiative of ASLF and they vowed support for this sort of programs

in the coming days too. The speech by the President marked the end of the Two days

“Professional Technical Writing Training”.

RECOMMENDATIONS BASED ON THE EVALUATION OF TRAINING:

An evaluation paper was distributed to the each of the participants of the Training to express

their thoughts and comments regarding the program. Based on the study of the evaluation by

the participants, the following points are recommended:

These sorts of academic training programs for capacity building will be conducted on the

days to come as well.

A significant portion of the Training program will be allocated for the Exercise session for

the practical experience of the participants.

Refreshment sessions and Entertainment activities will be conducted for short period in

between the sessions on days to come.

The Title and contents about the topics to be covered in the program will be circulated

to the participants some days before the program.

CONCLUSION:

Overall, the “Professional Technical Writing Training” organized by Agriculture Students Liaison

Forum (ASLF) in collaboration with Democratic Agriculturists’ Association- Nepal (DAAN) was a

huge success. The training program was successful to generate awareness and develop a strong

knowledge base about the crucial elements of the Technical Writing among the participants in

line with the objectives of the program.

ACKNOWLEDGEMENT:

We would like to thank our collaborative partner Democratic Agriculturists’ Association Nepal

(DAAN) for providing us the platform to showcase our potential and vision. Our program would

have been impossible without the devotion and commitment of Dr. Surya Prasad Paudel and Mrs.

Rama Paudel, who despite their busy schedule gave full commitment and devotion for our

program. We expect the similar support and assistance in the coming days too. We can never

stop thanking our temple of knowledge, Agriculture and Forestry University (AFU) for providing

us the financial and technical infrastructures for the successful completion of the program. The

precious suggestions and guidance of our Respected teachers Prof. Dr. Nabaraj Devkota, Dr.

Durga Devkota, Dr. Krishna Kaphle, Ram Hari Timilsina, Ankit Koirala had paved the path for the

proper execution of the program. The forever presence of Basistha Acharya, Abiskar Gyawali,

Susmita Poudel, Saroj Regmi, Madan Mani Sapkota, Manoj Sapkota, Madan Poudel, Tekendra

Singh Air, Prakash Kant Dahal has always provided us the much needed firepower to march

forward towards the successful completion of the program.

We thank you all for your support and expect the same in the coming days too.

Agriculture Student Liaison Forum (ASLF)

Agriculture and Forestry University

Rampur, Chitwan, Nepal

SOME GLIMPSES OF THE TRAINING PROGRAM:

Program Flex

From the left: Special Guest (Prof. Dr. Dilli Ram Baral, Dean, Faculty of Agriculture),

Chief guest (Prof.Dr. Ishwari Prasad Dhakal, Vice Chancellor, Agriculture and Forestry

University), President (Sujan Paudel, President, ASLF), Special Guest (Dr. Surya Kanta Ghimire,

Founding Registrar, AFU) during the Inauguration ceremony

Session of Mrs. Rama Paudel

Dr. Surya Prasad Paudel during his session

Group Exercise Session

Presentation of the Certificate of Appreciation to Resource Persons by the President of ASLF

Group Photo of the Participants and Organizers with the Resource Persons