Saturday 1 February 2014

Revalidation

After a couple of months of contemplation, I have finally gotten around to looking into the rules of Revalidation, and how to achieve this according to CILIPs new guidelines. I had been delaying this a bit because I knew that the rules were changing, and I was waiting for the guidelines to be updated enough for me to understand what I needed to do. I was also spurred on to looking at the VLE as I had a meeting with one of my mentees (I now have 2, and a full list - that took all of 2 months) and wanted to have at least a basic understanding of the new CILIP website.

In fairness, I had actually attempted to look at the CILIP VLE just before Christmas. I could get so far, but for some reason couldn't log into the portfolio section - which is where you add details of any CPD you've been doing. I tried again last week, and it worked. I had e-mailed CILIP to ask them to give me access, and the very same day (but after I had managed to log on) I got an e-mail saying they had given me access. Whether this is coincidence or why I was able to log on that day, I guess I'll never know.

So, I guess there are two strands to this. Revalidation itself, and using the VLE.

Let's talk about Revalidation first. CILIP recommend that you revalidate annually, and I Chartered in 2011, so it's time! It all seems relatively simple - and I'm keen to do it at least once before it (probably) becomes compulsory in 2015. Basically, you log 20 hours of CPD on the VLE, and then write a 250 word evaluative statement to say how your CPD corresponds to CILIP's 3 assessment criteria.

I have two main worries with all this. Firstly, I could probably complete 20 hours of CPD in about a month, and I'd like my Revalidation to span a slightly longer timescale than this! You can log more hours of course, but I don't want to get too bogged down. So for the time being I'm cherry picking the bits of CPD that fit best with the assessment criteria, in the hope that it'll cover roughly a 6 month period or so.  This includes things like reading a book on research data management, attending planning meetings at work, and being on an interview panel. I also intend to include things like being a mentor. I did think about including some CPD from 2012 (from before I went on maternity leave)  but that seems so long ago now that I think I'd find it hard to speak to it. So all the CPD I've picked is from Sept 2013 onwards, when I returned to work. I'm going to aim to submit this summer. My second worry is that 250 words really isn't very many at all for an evaluative statement. I'm going to have to be so succinct!

And so, onto the VLE. Now I've had a go at using it (and been able to log in), I'm a lot less frustrated by it than I was a month ago. It's not particularly intuitive though, so it took some time for me to figure out where I wanted was. Having said that, if you can find the training videos (and they're pretty visible, thankfully) they are incredibly useful, and really will help you to figure out where things are.

So now I just need to get on with actually logging some of those CPD activities...

PS Don't you just love library acronyms?

CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
VLE: Virtual Learning Environment
CPD: Continuing Professional Development

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