Seminar Presentation Improves Technical Report Writing By Crop Science Undergraduates in a Nigerian University.

Final year students (seniors) in the Department of Crop Production and Protection (CPP) at Obafemi Awolowo University, Ile-Ife, Nigeria must take CPP 514 – Research Methods in Crop Science, a two-semesters course. During the first semester, students are taught research methods in the different aspects of Crop Science handled in the Department – plant breeding, agronomy, weed science, crop physiology, mycology, virology, nematology, bacteriology, and entomology, along with data collection, analysis and interpretation, review of literature, report writing, and good seminar presentation.  During the second semester, the students have hands-on experience by presenting three seminars. In the first seminar series, each student makes presentation on a paper assigned by the student’s project supervisor. In the second series, presentation is made on a paper assigned by the course coordinator, and the third series is on the thesis research project of the student. The first two seminars are graded by the course instructors while the final seminar is graded by all academic staff of the Department; in each case, on a standardized grading form. The final year project report is graded by the student’s supervisor and another academic staff of the Department. Data collected on the seminars and reports from 2003 to 2015 were subjected to statistical analysis to investigate the impact of the hands-on approach on the technical report writing skill of the students. Mean scores in the seminars were 38±3.9, 61±2.0 and 69±1.8 %. Student’s score in technical report writing was positively correlated with seminar score (r=0.902**) with a linear regression equation Y=2.56+0.97x; r²=0.697. Conclusively, seminar presentation improves technical report writing of undergraduate Crop Science students.