Selected IRRI researchers and staff attended IRRI Education’s (IE) Research Proposal Writing Online Course, a pilot program offered by IE’s Online Learning and Product Development Unit, last 18-22 September 2023.
The course was intended to equip participants with the essential knowledge and competencies required to create impactful and well-structured research proposals that will enable them to actively contribute to meaningful solutions and improve their ability to think critically and make informed decisions in the field of agriculture. At the end of the course, participants were able to develop and present their research proposal draft.
The online course has four modules which consist of online self-paced lessons and knowledge checkpoint activities to facilitate learning. Additionally, there were synchronous lectures conducted by experts, which served as refreshers to the self-paced lessons, providing learners with the opportunity to engage directly with subject matter experts and delve deeper into the module’s content.
During the course’s opening program on 18 September, Angelica Valerie De Jesus, HR Business Partner, Learning and Development, welcomed the participants and expressed her excitement for the pilot session of the course. “We are so glad that the pilot session is happening already because as you may know, for the past years and past records of the performance management in IRRI, there is really a clamor for this kind of training. And there is no better team to deliver this training than the IRRI Education team who know whom to tap as resource speakers”.
Addressing the participants, she also gave some reminders about taking the course, “It is good that this course is a combination of synchronous and asynchronous, and when you take the asynchronous modules in the learning management system, we request you to not multitask because you really need to give attention to the learning so that you can get the most out of it Second, we encourage you to show up during the synchronous sessions. Apart from the experts that IRRI Education brought in, you will also learn a lot from your colleagues”.
Adding to this, Gopesh Tewari, Head of IRRI Education, commented during his opening remarks, “I’m very happy that we are starting this particular [course] and there are many more such types of programs in the pipeline that we are going to roll out with the support of HR-OD over a period of time so that we can build the internal capacities of the IRRI colleagues as well”. He also shared his vision of the future offerings of the courses stating “Eventually, we plan to pull together content from different programs ranging from management, policies, leadership, to the technical and hard sciences, and create asynchronous learning contents which can be used as life-long learning modules by everyone.”
In the learning management system, participants expressed their remarks about the course. Vijayakumar Shanmuagam commented, “The valuable lesson I acquired through this research proposal writing course includes the understanding of the difference between a research proposal and a project proposal and having a clear idea of the overall structure of both. I have also learned what things I must include in my proposal. I will prepare my research proposal following the same structure given in this lesson”.
Meanwhile, Ruvicyn Bayot shared “It is always important to go back to the fundamentals of research project development. I appreciate the opportunity to review basic concepts and terminologies”.
The course concluded on Friday, 22 September, with a face-to-face session at the IRRI Education Training Room 1, where participants presented their research proposals and received final critiquing of their outputs.
During his message to the participants during the closing program, Neheden Amiel Sarne, the main resource person for the training, encouraged them to keep practicing writing their proposals and to not be disheartened when they get rejections.
After the delivery of the pilot course, IE’s Online Learning Unit will conduct a thorough evaluation to gauge the success of the implementation and make necessary updates and improvements to the course.
With six other online courses ready for pilot delivery and a few more in the pipeline, IRRI Education looks forward to expanding its online educational offerings in the future.
For more information about the pilot online course and updates on IRRI Education’s online course offerings, please visit education.irri.org or email us at openlearning@irri.org.