It is informal or unplanned learning that is often harder to define and recognise, but often this can be the most useful type of development and can contribute valuable hours of CPD to your professional development records as well as supporting any applications for professional registration.
Recognising Learning Opportunities
Ad hoc or workplace learning makes up a large percentage of how you will demonstrate that you have reached or are maintaining the competences for professional registration. Whether it is what you learn by doing a task for the first time or skills you pick up from a training opportunity for a mentor or line manager, you can use these initial experiences as building blocks for the next steps in your development as long as you learn to recognise these as learning opportunities when they arise.
With each new task, take a few moments to consider what you will achieve and whether or not it will help you to develop or maintain a competence.
Tip: These do not have to be specific and could fit into the broad A-E categories for professional registration, or may be something outside of UK-SPEC such as commercial awareness.
Recording Activities
Whilst we recommend that you use Career Manager for your formal records, and for submitting a declaration of your CPD to the IET, we recognise it is not always practical to log evidence of competence or CPD Activities in the midst of an activity. It is often easier to make a brief note, either on your phone, tablet or just on a piece of paper – the key thing is to get into the habit of transferring this into Career Manager records later and doing this on a regular basis so that it forms the good habit of regular professional development recording.
You should make a note of:
- A brief description of what lead to the learning;
- What you learned;
- A reflection of how this helped either the situation or your understanding;
- Any UK-SPEC competences or soft skills gained.
Tip: We recommend that you update your records at least once a month for the first few years of development, particularly if you are working toward professional registration, and at least once a quarter for CPD (or more frequently if you prefer).
You do not have to record every item in a lot of detail, once you repeat a task a number of times and it becomes familiar you may not get as much learning from it, but can still make a note of this to demonstrate the different types of activity that you have undertaken.
For example, do you remember the first time that you gave a presentation or wrote a report? You may have spent a lot of time researching what to say and how to present the information. You may also have attended a presentation skills or Technical Report writing course. Do you use the same level of research when undertaking presentations or reports now? What have you learned about yourself and your writing or presentation style since then? Do you regularly write reports or give presentations now? Are you more comfortable giving presentations now than you were that first time?
Once something becomes an embedded part of your role, you can still show this in your job role responsibilities in your career or employment history for both professional registration and CPD recording and this will formulate part of your wider CV.
Tip: If you are working toward professional registration, make sure that you write your employment information according to the Career Manager guidance notes to save yourself time re-writing it when you are preparing your application.