Recognising the importance of effective doctoral programmes in Nigerian universities, the Consortium for Advanced Research Training in Africa (CARTA) in conjunction with the Postgraduate College of the University of Ibadan (UI), organised a three-day workshop for selected academic staff of the nation’s Premier University.
The workshop held at the Otunba Subomi Balogun Conference Centre, UI, titled, “Capacity Strengthening for Doctoral Research Supervision” – Supervisors’ Workshop (SW) is aimed at training doctoral supervisors towards appreciating the importance of doctoral students finishing in record time and conducting their research properly.
The ongoing workshop holding from January 28-30, 2024, is part of a new initiative in the UI Postgraduate College called “The Doctoral Academy”.
The CARTA focal person, who was the past Provost of the UI College of Medicine, Professor Akinyinka Omigbodun, noted that the overall aim of the workshop is that those who have been trained would have a better appreciation of global best practices when it comes to doctoral supervision and they would translate these global best practices to how they supervise students in their departments.
Omigbodun, who assured that all lecturers in the nation’s Premier University would be trained at the end of the day, expected those trained to share what they would have learnt with others in their departments who are yet to be trained.
According to him, everybody who is supervising doctoral students in the university should be exposed to formal training, adding that the workshop organisers are planning a retraining programme for the staff to internalise the right principles of doctoral supervision and to continue to pass new developments to the lecturers.
His words, “We are hoping it is not a once and for all thing. Those who have come for training now, hopefully in a few years will come back for retraining again. By that time, we would have trained practically everybody supervising doctoral students.”
Omigbodun reiterated, “The essence of this workshop is to look at the various aspects of doctoral training and make sure that we strengthen the foundations and all the key elements of the training. Ultimately, the product of our doctoral training will be ready to go. They will be strong, and well-trained researchers. Doctoral training essentially is to train people to do research properly. That is what we are trying to achieve.”
“The present workshop is to train supervisors, those who are guiding the training through doctoral training until they get their PhD. So, if the supervisors are well trained, they will be better able to motivate, mentor, encourage and get doctoral students to complete their PhD training on time.”
The professor of Medicine, who lamented the inability of the doctoral students to finish their programme in record time, said that the university should find a way to make this a thing of the past saying it is not acceptable for doctoral students to spend between four to ten years running a programme designed to finish within three years.
In his remarks, the UI Provost of the Postgraduate College, Professor Ayodeji Ogunjuyigbe pointed out that the university would take more seriously the monitoring of the progress of the doctoral students.
He stated that the institution is putting in place an electronic platform that would allow the Postgraduate College to monitor students from the commencement of the doctoral programme.
According to him, the electronic scheme is currently being used for the newly admitted students adding, “We are carrying them along. We will monitor them and ensure that they conclude their research in three years for full-time and four years for part-time.
“What we are looking for is to have outstanding researchers been given birth to because UI prides itself in having a number of these outstanding researchers. You can be an outstanding researcher and unable to reproduce yourself. We are trying to push how to reproduce ourselves”, Ogunjuyigbe added.
