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Online Workshop on Science Writing, Current Science
Video Sessions on Saturdays and Sundays
Exercises and email discussions on weekdays
9 October 2021 to 9 January 2022
Minimum qualifications: PhD in any branch of science
and at least two scientific papers in peer reviewed journals
Researchers and scientists from Indian institutions
can apply
Current Science has been organizing a series of training workshops on science writing for the benefit of scientists, researchers and science faculty in India. But after the 12th workshop, this activity stopped due to the COVID-19 pandemic. So the workshop has now been re-designed as an online workshop.
The workshop aims to enhance the capacity of scientists and researchers to write different types of scientific articles, reviews, grant applications and project reports.
Participants selected for the workshop are expected to take active part in the 60-90 minutes online video meetings on Saturdays and Sundays. During the weekdays, there will be group email discussions on issues related to science and writing, activities and exercises requiring about 15 minutes from the participants, at their own convenient time.
To allow group discussions, interpersonal interactions, hands-on training, feedback and mentoring, only 14 persons will be selected for the workshop.
This is not a course to merely attend, but a workshop where the participants have to write publication-worthy science.
Registration fee: Rs 5,000/- to be paid on selection.
Application form and the details of the workshop are available at this link.
Last date for application: 30th September 2021
About the workshop
Current Science started organising workshops on science writing in 2016. The intention was to improve the ability of Indian researchers to write better scientific manuscripts. The journal may gain indirectly in terms of the quality of manuscripts that are submitted to the journal.
The workshop series is intended for active researchers with at least 2 papers to their credit. The time away from research (and in many cases, teaching) is costly. So initially, the workshop was designed as a one-week event – five and half working days, including half a Saturday.
Before this one-week face-to-face interaction, the workshop had one-month long online interactions and discussion related to science and to writing. These discussions oriented the participants to the political, social, infrastructural, economic and historical aspects of science – factors which are missing in science education in the country. These online discussions helped ‘break ice’ among the participants so that when the workshops start, the discussions on philosophical or epistemological aspects of science can be discussed.
During the workshops, we discussed details about writing scientific papers, reviews and other types of manuscripts. As a part of the work in the workshops, the participants were to write a three hundred word science news report based on a recently published paper. In the context of this exercise, the essential skill sets needed for doing research and publishing results were provoked.
The ability to ask relevant and productive questions, the ability to access relevant literature quickly and efficiently, the ability to read and extract important information from papers, the ability to critically evaluate a scientific paper, the ability to manage and organise knowledge outside the mind, the ability to structure and restructure the content of communication based on the target readers… All these are skills that can be honed only by practice and improved through critical feedback from others. The work done during the workshop extended into the next month for this purpose and the final output is published in Current Science as a news column. The design of the workshop was effective and there was a regular output through every issue of the journal. The participants started enjoying writing science.
The feedback from the participants in the sixth and seventh workshop led to addition of more content: writing project proposals/grant applications and project reports. Thus from the eighth workshop, the face to face component was extended to seven and half days.
After the 12th workshop, COVID-19 pandemic started and Current Science had to stop organising the workshops.
But tools such as ZOOM and Google Meet suddenly became popular. I redesigned the workshop and conducted a three-month long workshop for SKUAST-K. The schedule of interactions using Google Meet three times a week and online email discussions, exercises etc. on the other days slowly tapered off into Google Meet twice a week when the participants started working in earnest. The workshop was successful. So I experimented with more online workshops to analyse the strengths and weaknesses of completely online workshops and to tweak the design.
The online workshop by Current Science was initiated only after testing the design multiple times. For the participants it will be more value for less money. We save on travel, food and lodging. There is more time to reflect, to research, to write. And there is no need to take leave and to be away from the family to participate in the workshop. We will miss out only on the informal chats during breakfast, tea breaks and lunch. But that is a small price to pay in these times.
Online workshop on science writing
We plan to do another online workshop on science starting early next month. The three-month workshop involves Google Meet from 10 am to 11:30 am on Saturdays and Sundays. Interactions on an email discussion group on weekdays.
The focus this time is science communication.
Target group: People doing PhDs and Masters in sciences.
Link to application form: https://forms.gle/bDX5st6yCZee9WMj6
Online workshop for SKUAST-K
The COVID-19 epidemic put a stop to efforts to build the capacity of Indian researchers and scientists to write better – better papers, reviews, grant applications, project reports… So, from March last year, there were no workshops – plans for workshops in Kashmir, Bhopal, Chennai, Hyderabad and Siliguri had to be dropped. But Anup Raj, from SKUAST-K who had participated in an earlier workshop, was adamant – his students needed the workshop.
So an online version was designed to be delivered over three months: three Google meetings a week initially and, when the participants start working, two meetings per week. Google Group discussions are sandwiched in between sessions. The dropout rate in online workshops and courses is legendary. So we admitted 21 participants. Three dropped out before the first session. And one more, soon after. So we had fourteen participants – ideal for capacity building exercises – mostly PhD scholars, one MSc student and the remaining were fourth year BSc students. Three faculty members were allowed as observers, with a separate channel for communication through emails.
Negotiating 32 sessions in the online mode posed difficulties. One cannot get a visual feedback on the participants’ reactions through thumbnail-sized videos. Internet restrictions in Kashmir made it difficult for the participants to access 4G. So I had to be content with interacting with still photographs. The audio from some participants came out distorted. So they had to use the chat box to communicate. And unreliable internet connections made it difficult for many participants to attend all sessions. Since the contents of the sessions were interconnected, missing a session meant bewilderment for the absentee in the next session. It demanded repetitions of ideas and concepts from earlier sessions.
But in spite of all the limitations, the output from the workshop was more than what I could have achieved in an eight day face-to-face workshop with online interactions for two months. To take a look at the output, a dummy science news magazine, click here.
Cover and text design by Ufaid Mehraj, SKUAST-K
Most of the reports were published in Current Science Reports, a science news column in Current Science in February and March issues.
The workshop was supported by NAHEP. The university was happy with the output and there were some newspaper reports about the workshop. You can see them here, here, here and here.
Workshop on Health Communication
One-month online workshop for broadcasters in the ASEAN region
By November 2020, I had written nine modules of a health communication manual for broadcasters, covering the most difficult areas in the background knowledge required for any health communicator. I had adequate ideas and notes for writing more. But I hesitated. I was out of touch with broadcasters for more than a decade. And I had seen the rapidity at which the broadcast sector evolved from the 1980s to the 2000s. I had missed out on developments in the sector while focusing on writing skills of scientists and researchers.
The modules had to be pretested. And there was an urgent need to build broadcaster capacity in health communication.
The Asia Pacific Institute for Broadcasting Development invited applications for a one-month workshop. And there were more candidates than we could handle in one workshop. Moreover, the logistics of organising a workshop for countries that cover a wide range of longitudes and time zones would be a nightmare. So we settled on two workshops – one for the ASEAN countries and another for SAARC and African regions. AIBD inaugurated the workshop for ASEAN countries on 7th January 2021.
From the next week, on Mondays, Wednesdays and Fridays, I met two participants each from Myanmar, Thailand, Cambodia and the Philippines and one participant each from Vietnam and Hong Kong. I had touched down in Hong Kong en route to Macao and I have had the opportunity to stay in the other countries and to imbibe their cultures. Now, the cultural gap that I felt was of a different kind – that between scientists and broadcasters. Happily, I could quickly take on the attitude of the broadcaster – an attitude that I had slowly shed in the last ten years. A Google Form to understand the background of the participants helped – journalism, language, international relations, law – all very different and far from the biomedical topics that I had to discuss. The register of language that I had used in the draft modules was also too high for non-English-speaking countries. But by the third session, I was in sync with the participants and their needs.
After dealing with communicable diseases and causative pathogens – prions, viruses, bacteria, algae, protozoa, fungi, helminths, arthropods – I shifted to language broadcasters can understand. Information Education Communication, Participative Communication, Behaviour Change Communication and Social Change Communication… Though people who study journalism are often exposed to these ideas, the perspectives that I presented were new, enriched with elements of information theory and sociobiology.
When I was back on track with noncommunicable diseases, I was on a comfortable road and it was easy to take the participants along. Meanwhile, I was getting used to the idiosyncrasies of Google Meet. Though I could not see the participants (most switch off the camera to save on data) I learned to use the chat box to engage them. And using Google Group email discussions extended the workshop beyond the thrice-a-week Google Meetings. To get around the constraints that the online workshops posed, I leveraged on available digital tools to create workshop activities.
First came the creation of a draft database of contacts that broadcasters can use. Names and contact details of people in the WHO Country office, officials in the health ministry and departments, specialist doctors, biomedical researchers, NGOs dealing with health issues, foundations focused on specific diseases, pharma industries… Little by little, the database is getting populated with inputs from participants.
Next came a database of diseases, organised in the same manner as the International Classification of Diseases, the tool that the WHO uses to collect data from countries around the world. The broadcasters have to assess the burden of each disease based on data from the last few years. This can help them focus on diseases that matter to people in their footprint and respond in an evidence-based and timely manner with appropriate programmes.
But what genres are appropriate for health communication? What genre can be used to provide information? Which genre is better for education and which, for eliciting community action?
Before jumping into the programming and production of health-related content, it was important for the participants to understand the history of programming in their own broadcast organisations. So I created a draft database for the participants to list existing programmes, topics covered, genres etc. along with a field for quality. Good quality programmes can be repeated. And one can start planning for programme exchange with other countries in the region to save production costs.
Towards the end of the workshop, I focused on issues related to quality: the need to set procedures to reduce chances of bad productions and principles to improve the quality of information in each programme. We also discussed techniques to engage audiences by structuring biomedical content in a form that would engage and entertain audiences.
The workshop ended on 8th February. But the workshop continues. I will keep engaging the participants through the Google Group till the workshop for SAARC and Africa is also over. Networking participants from different workshops, I have learned, is extremely productive.
science and media workshops 