Conducting national seminars effectively

To make the conference a real success, cooperation and hard work of all the faculty members as a team must be there, writes P M Mathew.

With the new academic year started, many departments in colleges and universities have started preparations for conducting national seminars and conferences. Most of these programmes are sponsored by UGC, AICTE, ICSSR and such other bodies. On many occasions the money and time spent on these programmes do not result in the desired outcomes. The following are some of the suggestions for the better conduct of such programmes.

Purpose of ational conferences/seminars should serve the following purposes

n To benefit the students and faculty by providing them an opportunity to actively participate in research paper presentations by experts from across the country and to actively get involved in the interactions -post presentation.

n To provide an opportunity to the students to get experiences in the various logistics of conducting a national event by working in teams and under faculty supervision.

n To enable the department to publish an edited volume each year and to provide policy recommendations to the government.

n To enhance the research output of the faculty and students by providing opportunity to present and publish individual, faculty and faculty, and student and faculty collaborated research papers

n To make the departments and colleges more visible to the intelligentsia through proper media interventions.

n To generate  a better opportunity to experience and demonstrate unity and solidarity among the faculty members.

n To provide an opportunity to the faculty and students of the department to network with the best minds in their discipline.
Suggestions for better seminars

The preparation for a national seminar should actually start 1 year prior to the seminar dates.

The topic should be mostly of a contemporary nature with sufficient scope for research and policy recommendations.

While extraordinary brilliant theoretical papers could be considered, preference should be given to original research papers with standard empirical work.All sessions should be plenary and papers received should be subjected to double review process.

The department should ensure that all students are attending the presentations. The tendency of large number of students to be outside the venue for managing the logistics should be discouraged.

 The key note speaker should be an eminent scholar in the general theme of the conference who can motivate and enlighten the students.

Formalities like long welcome and introductory speeches, lighting the lamp etc should be avoided.

 A short prayer song, either solo, duet or team should be there.

The welcome cum introduction to the seminar speech should be a single speech by the chief co coordinator or HOD and it should not be read out.

This should be followed by a short message by the VC,Principal, ,Director or any other officials like the Registrar or Dean. 

Only the papers of authors who presented the paper should be considered for the edited volume.

Different faculty committees should be constituted well in advance.

The editor ordinarily should be the chief co coordinator.

The institutional affiliation and the research experience of the paper presenters should be considered while the primary criterion for selection is the submission and presentation of unplagiarised original research. While the chairs for different sessions could be invited from outside, faculty members in the department should act as co-chairs and session in charges (for logistics etc). There is no need for an outside resource person for the valedictory.

Main agenda for the valedictory should be the feedback from select participants, distribution of certificates and best paper awards, if any. There should be a well prepared vote of thanks by any one of the co-coordinators and a speech by the Dean, HOD or Registrar.
Planning in advance

One year in advance a 500 words paper proposal consisting of research problem, objectives, hypotheses, scope, methodology etc should be invited. The researcher should get at least 1 year to bring out a good research paper .After a strict deadline of two months, the authors of best proposals should be directed to prepare their paper. 

On receipt of full papers, papers not meeting scientific standards should be rejected. Authors of rejected papers should be sent polite regret letters requesting them to participate in the seminar. If anybody among them are eminent researchers or are with reputed institutional affiliations, they could be invited as session chairs or respondents.

After a paper is presented a well prepared response to the paper should be delivered by the respondent. The critical comments of the respondent should be considered by the author of the paper to improve his paper, if selected for the edited volume. The edited volume could be released in a function at the college. 

The conference compendium to be released at the inaugural function should include only the abstracts of selected papers and the summary of respondent’s views. For this the full paper should be sent to the respondent well in advance. It is to be understood that the abstract is different from paper proposal. The abstract is prepared by the author after the full paper is prepared. The deliberations at the seminar/conference could be summarized and important policy recommendations could be provided to the Government.

The organizers should realize that reading out from PowerPoint slides is an out dated approach and the latest trend  is to encourage  authors to deliver a speech highlighting  the major findings of their research.

 Finally, to make the conference a real success, the wholehearted, selfless cooperation and hard work of all the faculty members as a team must be there.