Leadership

What is Continuing Professional Development?

A web search will yield many definitions of Continuing Professional Development (CPD). However, there is general agreement that CPD consists of formal and/or informal learning that leads to the enhancement of knowledge, skills and personal attributes necessary to carry out professional duties.

Professional development in teaching can:

• be personally rewarding;
• meet personal development needs;
• improve professional practice;
• lead to improvements in the student learning experience. In medical and health sciences education, an improved student learning experience can ultimately benefit patient; and
• contribute to career progression.
  
  

Engaging Others in Continuing Professional Development

There are many ways of evaluating the effectiveness of innovation.  In education, we typically advocate a triangulated (three pronged) approach to evaluation - we ask our students about their experiences, we ask our peers for their professional opinion, and we self-reflect.    

Sometimes we need to be a bit more creative when we are gathering information about our courses.  Other forms of evaluation may include, but  not be limited to;

• An external assessor who might moderate your course and provide feedback.
• If your course is delivered online as an open access course you might ask visitors to the course website to provide you with feedback. Gathering feedback in this way - open access feedback - can provide you with a range of perspectives that you might not otherwise have had.

What's On Offer

If you are going to engage others in formal professional development, you are going to need to know about professional development opportunities at the University and within the FMHS.

• The Academic Practice Group at the CLeaR offers continuing professional development for University staff. Their programmes include a wide range of services for CPD in both teaching and research.
• The Faculty's Learning Technology Unit (LTU) offers a range of professional development opportunities in the area of teaching with technologies. Services include workshops and one-on-one support for academics.
• The Faculty of Medical and Health Sciences' Centre for Medical and Health Sciences Education (CMHSE) offers a postgraduate qualification in Medical Education.

If you are thinking about your own CPD, you might want to consider the CMHSE postgraduate qualifications in Medical Education (bullet point 3 above) as merit in continuing professional development might be evidenced through gaining additional teaching qualifications.
 

Measuring the Impact of CPD

Dr Thomas Guskey - CPD expert at the University of Kentucky - has suggested that there are three ways to evaluate the impact of CPD:

• We might measure changes in beliefs and attitudes about teaching;
• We might measure changes in educational practice;
• We might measure changes in student learning e.g. improved learning outcomes.

The final measure would seem to be the most important - ultimately we want to know that CPD resulted in changes in student learning. This change might be an improvement in the student experience of learning. For example, students might report that they enjoyed learning more as a result of a change in teaching methods. This is important as we want students to enjoy their learning so that they have a passion for the subject and so that they leave university as life long learners. Change might also be measured in terms of improvements in student learning i.e. better outcomes. While it can be difficult to isolate improvements that resulted from a CPD activity, the attempt has to be made.