UTAR Centre for Foundation Studies (CFS) of Kampar Campus successfully organised a free online writing workshop for budding scientists on 22 July 2020.

Aimed at improving writing skills among science students, the workshop was conducted by CFS Department of Science and Engineering academics Ho Wai Yew and Rachel Tham Jia-Hui. According to Ho and Tham, findings and knowledge garnered from breakthrough scientific studies are of no use if they are not communicated effectively to the mass. Hence, they were motivated to organise this workshop. The workshop managed to attract a total of 100 participants.

In the first session titled “What tense to use when writing scientific reports?”, Ho attempted to provide solutions to the age-old dilemma faced by many science students when writing. He provided instances where the present tense, past tense, and perfect tense are appropriate with examples. Before the session ended, the participants had a short quiz which was carried out via Kahoot!, an online quiz platform. The participants found the quiz engaging as they were able to gain instant feedback on their answers.

In the second session, Tham explained further on writing conventions which included the use of proper punctuation, capitalisation, numbers and symbols. In addition to that, she also provided a brief introduction of referencing styles to the participants. The participants were engaged in a lively discussion when it came to citing Malaysian authors.

The virtual workshop ended with a brief Q&A session. The workshop received positive feedback from the participants and they hope more writing workshops will be organised upon their return to the campus.