Faculty Training Courses

Course 2.1: Scientific communication

Credits 3 ECTS
Target group: faculty as well as doctoral students.

Methods: This course will teach standard scientific communication skills, writing
a scientific article and research plan for the grant application, and presenting data and job
searching.The aims are to deepen the understanding of the structure and the requirement of scientific articles as well as the publishing process (lectures 6 hours). This includes typical errors on the structure of articles as well as typical Ghanaian errors in style and expression. In a
practical part, we do “toy peer reviews” of draft articles of the participants and provide detailed
feedback on writing. Each course participant will give one oral presentation (10 min/ 5 slides)
and after the oral presentation feedback will be given for improvement. A demo research plan
structure and funding application will be carried out for the course participants. In the course,
the appropriate platform (Publication company, Journal ranking, specific topic-related journal,
etc.) for scientific article publication will be discussed. In the course, it will also be discussed
to write a motivational letter for specific job applications.

Course outcomes: The participants will learn standard academic scientific communication skills. They will be able to write good-quality scientific articles, research plans and funding applications. They will have proper knowledge about the publication process, preparing and presenting oral presentations, and communications skills to interact with a different audience and finally participants will get skills to write motivational letters for job applications.

Course 2.2: Data analysis and its teaching using R

Credits 4 ECTS

Target group: faculty as well as doctoral students.

Methods: The course will be given in Ghana in year two as a short intensive course. Short
intensive course 3x 4 days (separated by three weeks) and will have required pre-
readings. (Bases of R based on the open source manuscript ICEBREAK-R from Andrew
Robinson). In this course, the teacher will provide instruction to familiarize with R and
RStudio and how to use R applications, tools and different R packages. In this course,
instruction will be provided on how to clean, organise, analyse, and visualise data by R.
In our course, we will provide some examples of R for data treatment (merging, sorting and
aggregating data) as well as for statistical analysis. We will also make a module on how to
use R in teaching (pitfalls, tips and tricks).

Course outcomes: Participants will learn R programming and its environment. They will be able to understand vital concepts of R, such as R functions, variables, data types and vectors. Participants will have the ability to do visualisation and data presentation through R programming.

Course 2.3: Strengthening capacities for indigenous knowledge and local solutions for
climate change.

Credits: 4 ECTS

Target group: faculty as well as doctoral students, stakeholders, local inhabitants

Methodology: CIKOD, as a partner for many international and national development
projects, has developed the “African Learning Institute” (ALI) approach to create an
education, research and development space where practitioners, academics and the
community meet to co-create knowledge. The approach has been successfully used in
connection with Universities. The ALI approach is based on confidence building and equal
opportunities of every participant to contribute and get heard.

Content: ALI starts and finishes with a community ceremony. It is based on immersion into
a local community for joint learning and co-creation of knowledge. A large part of the ALI
focuses on raising consciousness and courage and appreciating different sources of
knowledge. In the second part of an ALI, mixed groups of academics, stakeholders and
local inhabitants identify and solve climate adaptation problems. The solutions are,
thereafter, reported to a larger plenum by a rapporteur. Discussions are based on the
equality of all participants.
One week after the ALI, we will debrief with the academic partners online to reflect on the
learning experience.

Learning outcomes: Participants will know after the course what indigenous knowledge is. They will understand the ALI methodology and how to map and apply indigenous knowledge in practice. They will, also learn how to step from indigenous knowledge to co-creation of knowledge through a synthesis of scientific and traditional approaches.