Back in October 2014 I wrote a post detailing how I would record my continuing professional development (CPD) in preparation for submitting my next Revalidation application in the autumn of 2015.
This follow-up post aims to reflect on how well that is going.
Firstly, having set up an iDoneThis account has really helped - those weekly Friday e-mail reminders to record any CPD done that week have forced me to spend some time (usually no more than half an hour on a Friday afternoon) looking back at what CPD I've done over the past week, recording it in a Word document and then e-mailing it to my iDoneThis account. In all honesty I don't really need to add it to the iDoneThis account - it's the e-mail from them that is needed to prompt me to write the thing in the first place. The Word document is clearer and easier to refer to, which is why I continue to use that. [NB: Having said all that, I've just discovered that I failed to transfer the file with my CPD activities from my work PC to my home PC. Being able to refer to iDoneThis on-line to check what CPD I have undertaken in the past few months was actually really helpful. So perhaps the extra e-mail is worth it after all].
I have also managed to, once a month, go through the activities I've listed weekly and add them to the CILIP VLE. This is up-to-date as of the end of December 2014, which I think is pretty impressive given that Christmas got in the way, and I headed off on maternity leave in mid January! I've managed to list between 2 and 6 activities per month since Sept 2014, when I began recording CPD activities for my next Revalidation. This is likely to peter out over the next few months (what with me now being on maternity leave), but I'm hopeful I can add a few activities to the list - like (hopefully) helping my first Chartership candidate to finally Charter!
The things I haven't done are those that I've suggested I'll do annually. I'm fully aware that about now I should be updating my CV and development plan for the coming years, and it is on the to-do-list, but quite honestly, it's not at the top. If I get to it before the imminent arrival of a certain somebody, great. If not, it will have to wait. I'm being pragmatic here because my to-do-list is quite long (if decreasing)!
Luckily, completing the PKSB (Professional Knowledge and Skills Base) and submitting my Revalidation CPD log are September activities, so I've got a while before I have to worry about them too much. Hopefully by then life will have settled into enough of a routine so that I feel able to do both! If nothing else, I am keen to at least have submitted my Revalidation log - I think getting into a habit of doing it annually can only be a good thing.
PS Acronym reminder time:
CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
CPD: Continuing Professional Development
PKSB: Professional Knowledge and Skills Base
VLE: Virtual Learning Environment
Showing posts with label PKSB. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PKSB. Show all posts
Friday, 30 January 2015
Monday, 27 October 2014
Recording continuing professional development (CPD) for Revalidation
Having just submitted my application for CILIP Revalidation (after Chartering in 2011), I figured now would be a good time to look at how I record my continuing professional development, and see if I could make any improvements. (Yes, a year ago may have been a better time, and being that I don't know whether or not I've successfully revalidated yet, perhaps I am doing this too late. Either way, hopefully it will help me with either a resubmission or a future Revalidation in a year or so's time).
Having recently read the CILIP Revalidation posts on the Joeyanne Libraryanne blog, I figured these would help to give me some inspiration about what I could improve, and how.
The first stage of revalidating is to record what professional development you have. My current submission includes things like attend conferences, participating in department and university-wide meetings, mentoring, professional reading, visiting libraries in other sectors and getting involved in staff management and recruitment. All of these are valid professional development activities, as are many others.
Jo suggests recording these on a daily, monthly and annual basis. This is where I fall down. I record my activities periodically, but not in any sort of organised manner. This makes it easy to miss activities, or forget what I have gained from them. So, in an attempt to get a little more organised, I have combined some of the advice on Jo's blog with some of the things I already do:
Weekly (every Friday)
I have set up, as suggested, an iDoneThis account. Whilst you can be e-mailed daily from this (you choose a question, then send an e-mail in reply, which gets added to your iDoneThis calendar), I have opted to just be e-mailed once a week, on a Friday afternoon. I only work 3 days a week, so getting a daily e-mail seemed a bit excessive. Whilst I might do development activities every working day some weeks, this is rare - and it's equally like that I won't have done any in my 3 working days during a week. I'm hoping that one e-mail on a Friday afternoon will prompt me to complete the calendar every week with any CPD I have done, but not feel overwhelming.
Monthly (last Friday of the month)
I am better at updating my CPD on something like a more monthly basis. I tend to go through my Outlook calendar, figure out what CPD I have done, and then add it to a Word document, detailing which of the three CILIP assessment criteria it meets. This helps me determine which activities to bother adding to the CILIP VLE as part of my development log. In future, I'm hoping to do something of a combination of what Joeyanne suggests on her blog, and the above. I will aim to:
1) Ensure that my iDoneThis calendar is up-to-date with all my development activities (whether or not I plan to add them to the CILIP VLE)
2) I may continue to add things to a Word document in order to determine which assessment criteria it meets. Not having used iDoneThis properly yet, I don't know whether or not I'll find this necessary. I may skip this step; the point is that I will use this time every month (if I don't end up doing it weekly) to determine which activities I want to add to the CILIP VLE.
3) Add the relevant activities to my CPD log in the CILIP portfolio
Annually
Jo also suggests updating your development plan and profiles (such as your CV and publications page) on a monthly basis. I have to admit, I'm rather more ad-hoc about this. I haven't published much at all, and I tend to have something of an 'it looks good and is relevant to me right now, so I'll do it' approach to development planning. So, for me, the following are more annual activities:
January
1) Update my CV (to be fair, I do need to add a publications section to this) - every Jan
2) Update my development plan (this usually takes the form of a 1-year, 3-year and 5-year plan, and the broad activities I need to carry out to achieve this) - every Jan
September
3) Complete the PKSB (Professional Knowledge and Skills Base). I've actually only done this on an ad-hoc basis in the past, but the new PKSB is actually much easier to use than previous CILIP iterations, and I believe it could be helpful with future development planning
4) Submit Revalidation CPD log and supporting evaluation statement
It may seem odd to split these four activities into two separate sections (one at the beginning of the year, one in the middle), but I know how much time I have, and am fully aware that trying to get them all done at the same time just won't happen. Only having two activities to do at any one time gives me a fighting chance of actually achieving the above.
****
The rest of Joeyanne's blogposts in her CILIP Revalidation Hints and Tips series focus on writing the supporting statement and compiling and submitting your Revalidation. I'm not going to focus on these in this blog post (primarily because I haven't successfully revalidated yet, and the advice Jo gives is perfectly good - I wouldn't have anything extra to add). However, they're great blog posts, and the one on compiling and submitting is especially helpful if you're trying to use the CILIP VLE and feeling a bit lost. I may well be coming back to it as a reference tool in a year or so.
So, the next thing to do is to set up reminders for myself in Outlook so that I know what I should be doing at any one point in time. I'll let you know how I get on!
PS Acronym explanation time:
CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
CPD: Continuing Professional Development
VLE: Virtual Learning Environment
Having recently read the CILIP Revalidation posts on the Joeyanne Libraryanne blog, I figured these would help to give me some inspiration about what I could improve, and how.
The first stage of revalidating is to record what professional development you have. My current submission includes things like attend conferences, participating in department and university-wide meetings, mentoring, professional reading, visiting libraries in other sectors and getting involved in staff management and recruitment. All of these are valid professional development activities, as are many others.
Jo suggests recording these on a daily, monthly and annual basis. This is where I fall down. I record my activities periodically, but not in any sort of organised manner. This makes it easy to miss activities, or forget what I have gained from them. So, in an attempt to get a little more organised, I have combined some of the advice on Jo's blog with some of the things I already do:
Weekly (every Friday)
I have set up, as suggested, an iDoneThis account. Whilst you can be e-mailed daily from this (you choose a question, then send an e-mail in reply, which gets added to your iDoneThis calendar), I have opted to just be e-mailed once a week, on a Friday afternoon. I only work 3 days a week, so getting a daily e-mail seemed a bit excessive. Whilst I might do development activities every working day some weeks, this is rare - and it's equally like that I won't have done any in my 3 working days during a week. I'm hoping that one e-mail on a Friday afternoon will prompt me to complete the calendar every week with any CPD I have done, but not feel overwhelming.
Monthly (last Friday of the month)
I am better at updating my CPD on something like a more monthly basis. I tend to go through my Outlook calendar, figure out what CPD I have done, and then add it to a Word document, detailing which of the three CILIP assessment criteria it meets. This helps me determine which activities to bother adding to the CILIP VLE as part of my development log. In future, I'm hoping to do something of a combination of what Joeyanne suggests on her blog, and the above. I will aim to:
1) Ensure that my iDoneThis calendar is up-to-date with all my development activities (whether or not I plan to add them to the CILIP VLE)
2) I may continue to add things to a Word document in order to determine which assessment criteria it meets. Not having used iDoneThis properly yet, I don't know whether or not I'll find this necessary. I may skip this step; the point is that I will use this time every month (if I don't end up doing it weekly) to determine which activities I want to add to the CILIP VLE.
3) Add the relevant activities to my CPD log in the CILIP portfolio
Annually
Jo also suggests updating your development plan and profiles (such as your CV and publications page) on a monthly basis. I have to admit, I'm rather more ad-hoc about this. I haven't published much at all, and I tend to have something of an 'it looks good and is relevant to me right now, so I'll do it' approach to development planning. So, for me, the following are more annual activities:
January
1) Update my CV (to be fair, I do need to add a publications section to this) - every Jan
2) Update my development plan (this usually takes the form of a 1-year, 3-year and 5-year plan, and the broad activities I need to carry out to achieve this) - every Jan
September
3) Complete the PKSB (Professional Knowledge and Skills Base). I've actually only done this on an ad-hoc basis in the past, but the new PKSB is actually much easier to use than previous CILIP iterations, and I believe it could be helpful with future development planning
4) Submit Revalidation CPD log and supporting evaluation statement
It may seem odd to split these four activities into two separate sections (one at the beginning of the year, one in the middle), but I know how much time I have, and am fully aware that trying to get them all done at the same time just won't happen. Only having two activities to do at any one time gives me a fighting chance of actually achieving the above.
****
The rest of Joeyanne's blogposts in her CILIP Revalidation Hints and Tips series focus on writing the supporting statement and compiling and submitting your Revalidation. I'm not going to focus on these in this blog post (primarily because I haven't successfully revalidated yet, and the advice Jo gives is perfectly good - I wouldn't have anything extra to add). However, they're great blog posts, and the one on compiling and submitting is especially helpful if you're trying to use the CILIP VLE and feeling a bit lost. I may well be coming back to it as a reference tool in a year or so.
So, the next thing to do is to set up reminders for myself in Outlook so that I know what I should be doing at any one point in time. I'll let you know how I get on!
PS Acronym explanation time:
CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
CPD: Continuing Professional Development
VLE: Virtual Learning Environment
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