THE SHORT COURSE ON ” LITERATURE REVIEW IN BUSINESS AND
MANAGEMENT RESEARCH” 15th to 17th January 2020
Preamble
From 15th to 17th January 2020 a short course on Literature Review in Business and Management Research was offered at the School of Agricultural Economics and Business Studies (SAEBS). The course was run under the Building Stronger Universities (BSU III) Project under its Agricultural Value Chain (AVC) Thematic Area. The facilitator was Professor Jonas Eduardsen from the Department of Business and Management, Aalborg University, Denmark. The course attracted researchers, postgraduate students and academicians from various units of the University.
About the Course
The purpose of the course was to provide attendees with detailed knowledge on literature reviewing, including the skills and competencies necessary to plan, design, complete and write a comprehensive literature review either as part of a thesis or a stand-alone product. It was intended that at the end of the course participants were expected to be able to explain the ‘what’, ‘how’ and ‘why’ of literature reviewing; Distinguish between different types of literature reviews; Plan, design, and conduct a literature review; Select and apply different methods for analyzing and synthesizing existing research.
Course Delivery
The course was officiated by Dr. Zena Mpenda on behalf of the Dean of SAEBS. In her opening speech, Dr. Mpenda commended the BSU III-AVC team for organizing the course at a perfect time. She added that the course is offered at the right time following the new Tanzania Commission for Universities (TCU) regulations that require postgraduate students to publish their research works. She also reminded the participants that the government is in demand for the research results from the Universities for policy implementation. Therefore, she concluded that participants should make use of the knowledge and skills that they are going to acquire through the course to improve their research works in order to help the government to have informed decision-making based on research evidence.
The course was participatory in nature as it included both lectures and group discussions. Participants were able to ask questions and share experiences on the various approaches of reviewing the literature among others.
During the first day, participants covered an introduction and approaches to literature reviews. On the second day, participants covered a topic on defining the scope and searching the literature, and assessing the literature. On the last day, participants were taken through “Making Sense of the Literature through Research Synthesis”, “Writing up the Literature Review” followed by the Questions and Answers session. On each day, in every topic, participants were exposed to practical exercise for more understanding of what they have learned.
Professor Jonas Eduardsen elaborate to the participants on the writing techniques of literature review
Closing
The course was officially closed by Prof. Msogoya, the Coordinator of postgraduate studies at the Directorate of Postgraduate Studies, Research, Technology Transfer and Consultancy (DPRTC) of the University, who also awarded the participants with certificates of participation. In his closing remarks, Prof. Msogoya also commended the SAEBS and the BSU III-AVC for organizing such an important course in the research and academia. He emphasized on the importance of reviewing the literature in research, which among others enables researchers and students in formulating research problems and identifying research gaps in order to solve society problems. He added that the course is imperative especially to postgraduate students at SAEBS who have been facing various research related problems some of which in one way or another emanate from the inability to effectively writing the literature reviews.
Dr. Zena Mpenda -DEFRE (on the left),Prof. Msogoya -DPRTC (at the middle), Professor Jonas Eduardsen, Dr Daniel Ndyetabula- DAEA (on the right) awarded the participants with certificates of participation in the literature review training
In giving the vote of thank on behalf of the participants, Mr. Barongo, a PhD students at SAEBS thanked the course organizers and requested that more similar short courses to be offered to build the capacity of both students and lecturers. He argued that the course has been helpful to not only the junior students who are in their early research development but also to senior students who are about to complete their studies
