This is an interesting exercise! Especially in the back-drop of inculcating the habit of reading/ understanding scientific literature among the under-grads. Kudos Anuttama and the rest of the NIUS team. One thing I was curious to know is if the student tests were followed by a discussion session; as in students presenting the paper followed by an interaction. Otherwise, a great initiative indeed.
Oh, I missed that. Thanks for the clarification Anuttama!
Dear Anuttama,
This is Dr.Anu Harshal from IISER, Pune, we conduct these online sessions on how to read scientific literature pan India in the online mode under the MANAV Human Atlas Initiative. Loved the read do connect with us if we could draw any valuable outputs from the feedback we get. You can write back to me at anupma@acads.iiserpune.ac.in
I am glad you liked the article. I am aware of the Manav initiative. Would surely get in touch. That would be great!
IMHO how to read a scientific paper is an important life skill in the age of infodemics, regardless of whether one envisions a career in academia. Since the beginnings of the pandemic we all have been wondering “how best to use all this free time?” When most of the colleges are closed and undergraduate studies are progressing at an unpredictable pace, using the online platform to impart such an important skill as reading a scientific paper is truly remarkable. Kudos to the creators!
Can we use these learnings to build an online tool which can be used by any student at any place as long as they have a stable internet connection? Is it possible to make it available in other vernacular languages so that more people can be reached? These are some of the questions that I am left with.
Thank you for your encouraging comment Rajeshree. We would absolutely like to have an online platform like you have mentioned. After these workshops, recently we tried a college outside Mumbai in a small city of Maharashtra, and the experience demanded a complete restructuring of the workshop, It will require a lot of help from subject experts and educators to build a common and yet useful resource.
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Dear Anuttama, I am a school teacher and in senior biology classes, each student is supposed to take up an investigatory project to be evaluated at different stages of its development. It would be a useful practice for them to understand handling research papers but dealing with topics that they are able to understand though essentially maintaining the same format of the workshop. To facilitate such workshops for our students, as part of the CPD, such training would be useful for senior-level teachers and as is being pointed out earlier in the discussion, an online tool and suitable resource material would also go a long way to help educators like myself. Would request to notify me in case there are more such workshops.
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Sure, Sushma ! Thanks for your interest.