Centre for Learning and Teaching Enhancement (CLTE), held its very first workshop on Mendeley -Reference Management Software at the College of Agriculture, Fisheries & Forestry (CAFF), Library on August 15th, 2019. A total of 19 students participated in the workshop. Mendeley is designed to be an academic networking tool as well as a platform-independent citation management tool that syncs data across all computers.

Dr. Kaliova Ravuiwasa, Associate Dean Learning & Teaching – CAFF, said the workshop was a timely one and a good learning experience for the participants as they were not acquainted with any reference management software. At the end of the workshop, the participants were thankful that they no longer have to write down long lists of bibliographies and citations manually since Mendeley has a browser plugin that allows for quick harvesting of bibliographic information, while a plugin for MS Word allows inserting citations from Mendeley library.

With Mendeley, citations can be created three ways: manually; automatically, by dragging a document onto the Mendeley desktop application; or from selected websites by using the “Import to Mendeley” browser button. Features such as Tagging and Folders facilitate sorting and searching for citations. Workgroups allow students to take networking further by creating both public and private spaces.

Similar workshops are being planned for the other FNU campuses.

Participants at the Mendeley Workshop, 15th August 2019 @ Koronivia Campus.