Baader-Meinhof moments

I was asked to go to a colloquium on Monday in the stead of a colleague who is unfortunatley ill. It was at Northumbria University, CETL for Assessment up in Newcastle and, in true Baader-Meinhof style, was about professionalism in higher education – extremely pertinent given my current area of study! The event was called ‘Credit-bearing professional development in higher education learning and teaching’, and featured a some interesting papers.

I was very interested to listen to the debates that emerged about values of professional development activities, why professionals are motivated to undertake CPD, and the underpinning principles that exist in higher education.

In one session, we were asked to pen a definition of what we thought to be CPD. I wrote, “Continuing professional development is about institutions providing opportunities, and individuals taking responsibility for maintaining and developing standards of professionalism.” The session was about the HEA’s perspective of credit-bearing CPD, and was centered around the UK professional standards framework descriptors. It got me to thinking about the commitment that a practitioner needs to make in any given profession.

Commitment is a recurring word in the values and principles of many other statements of professionalism too, and I think this is critical. It is saying that you have to commit to your own personal development wihtin the field in order to maintain a standard. So in turn, this implies a benchmark.

Stefani, L. (2005) ‘PDP/CPD and e-portfolios: rising to the challenge of modelling good practice’

Stefani, L. (2005) ‘PDP/CPD and e-portfolios: rising to the challenge of modelling good practice’ [online], Association for Learning Technology Available from: www.alt.ac.uk/docs/lorraine_stefani_paper.doc (accessed 24 September 2008

Stefani comments on the correlation between CPD and PDP and the benefit to embedding CPD into practice as it has been found that embedding PDP enhances the learner experience, quality of learning, efficiency gains, etc. She also reports on these factors being tied into a motivational driver that, for PDP, usually takes the form of assessment.

Stefani clarifies the portfolio type: “In most instances of e-folios for students, the rational [sic] behind the folio is to support and promote ‘reflective learning’.” (p.4) i.e. a reflective or learning portfolio. The Stanford University Learning Laboratory study exemplifies the functions of the portfolio tool as being flexible, organizable, supporting reflection and private as well as being able to house multimedia content. The study at University of Strathclyde presents a similar list but are presented with the learner at the centre – “to support students in reflecting on attainment, attitudes and progress…” However, in neither instance are examples of actual use reported.

Stefani comments on one of the key benefits to using an e-portfolio for teaching staff as being the abilitly to create a ‘point-in-time’ portfolio. The ability to rapidly generate a snapshot of activity for a variety of audiences, and maintain control over that content, is a powerful reward for users.