Workshop | 28–29 March 2024
Enhancing community of practice for PhD students
for research visibility and outreach
Dr Sophie Etomes of the University of Buea, Cameroon, presented a workshop for PhD students to discuss their challenges in doctoral education on 28–29 March 2024.
Before the workshop, preliminary data was collected from participants on their challenges in doctoral education and their expectations of the workshop. The data enabled facilitators to meet the needs of the participants. The 50 participants were in the early proposal stage of their research project. The objective is to follow them up to the final stage of the project.
The participants were trained on the need for a Community of Practice (CoP), the importance of CoP and best practices of CoP with the primary objective to enable students to overcome challenges in doctoral education such as liminality (intellectual challenge), a sense of isolation, the impostor syndrome (the feeling that you are not good enough) and supervisor/supervisee process which usually leads to delay in completion, dropout and inadequate skills acquisition.
The workshop also focused on the transdisciplinary Community of Practice: practice and relevance. Today's world is increasingly interconnected and complex, beyond local boundaries and barriers. Our task is to discover how knowledge in one area can augment or complement understanding in another. Some key features of a transdisciplinary CoP include the integration of diverse perspectives, a holistic approach and boundary-spanning.
Six research clusters of transdisciplinary CoP were developed based on students’ research projects: educational assessment and evaluation, students’ welfare, developmental psychology, quality assurance in education, academic planning and policy, and school leadership. The different groups worked together and developed a topic and a background. This was followed by a group presentation, with each of the six groups given 10 minutes to present. There was interaction with the facilitators after the presentations.
Participants at the workshop hosted by Dr Etomes at the University of Buea, Cameroon
The workshop was held because quality assurance and high-impact research in doctoral education is a call for concern in Cameroon and other parts of the world. While producing many more PhDs is relevant for economic growth and development, this is impossible without ensuring the quality of research output. The learning environment for PhD students is one of the factors that determines the quality of their education. Experience from supervision in Cameroon shows that most doctoral students work in isolation, which either delays their completion or leads to abandonment. It is usually said that “two heads are better than one”. Students cannot work alone in their doctoral journey to become scholars. Having the opportunity to share your work and worries with peers and other experts motivates PhD students. Through the community of practice, doctoral students gradually take on the identity and work of scholars in their field.
As the cradle of next-generation scientists and scholars, doctoral education programs aim to transform talented students into promising scholars. Two simultaneous processes feature this transformation: academic professionalisation and scholarly socialisation. The institutional environment, academic advisors, and, more importantly, the interaction between these factors and individual students play critical roles in the transformation. It is, therefore, relevant for PhD students to understand what community of practice is and how they can benefit from it during and after their PhD education.
Facilitators will continuously organise workshops and seminars to support the community's needs. A certificate of participation was handed to all participants at the end of the workshop.
Workshop report by Sophie Etomes
