Event registration and CPD

Hi Alex,


I'm just wondering why you queried Work Experience?


Cheers,


Andy

What does Work Experience mean in this context?

I would say anything you do at work (or for work) which helps you develop as a professional engineer can be recorded as Work Experience CPD. If planned, I'd tend to record it as self study, but sometimes an element of learning/research is necessary to complete an aspect of your tasks on any particular day. "TWAVES" hopefully just helps us to remember that CPD is a lot more than formal training. Hope that helps.

I had always discounted actual 'at work' study although I guess this isn't logical. As a designer the bulk of my job is learning new devices, tools & protocols, so I would imagine I fulfill my annual minimum CPD requirement every couple of weeks. There can't be many engineering jobs that fall under the CPD threshold, and most retired engineers I know take a very keen interest in engineering & technology.  I am out of touch with current Career Manager (and it was "closed for maintenance" last night when we wanted to discuss it in committee) but I'm not confident the uptake will be large. I think automatically feeding Career Manager CPD from registered event attendance would help both event numbers and Career Manager uptake.

This might be a step too far but if the limitation on improvong Career Manager is a financial one then could it be made open source? This might not be practical but there is certainly a very large pool of talented software engineers within the IET that would volunteer im sure?

Platforms like Github prove that there is a huge pool of software professionals willing to use there time to collaborate and volunteer time to improve code products.


Just food for thought.

That's an interesting idea. As a "technology institution" I'd like to see  us offering exemplary online services, and if we have access to some native talent to help us achieve that, all the better. I have a suspicion as to the reception this idea will receive.

I can see the benefit and I don't want to over-egg the following point but just as a very early warning I think we should be a little wary about automating the process too much to avoid CPD recording becoming tick-boxy - there's already a very tiny hint of "do this to make up your CPD hours", which doesn't quite sound like the professional attitude that the IET is intending to promote. The greater focus on planned and reflective CPD and support for it is a really good thing and I think the IET is doing great work on this.


Manually entering an event, including one's own description, contributes to the reflection process, which also needs to be documented. An event may also follow through from an action in a development plan so might want to be entered there first.


By the way, isn't it timely how Career Manager is down on the deadline day for CPD record submissions? :-)

Alex Barrett:

That's an interesting idea. As a "technology institution" I'd like to see  us offering exemplary online services, and if we have access to some native talent to help us achieve that, all the better. I have a suspicion as to the reception this idea will receive.

The IET can't even get logging in to the site working properly - it usually takes two attempts, and I frequently find cases where one bit of the web site thinks I'm logged in, while another thinks I'm not.


The odds of getting the booking process for local group events successfully linked to CPD seem pretty slim.

Lisa, the double login bug is so old and tired I don't even bother to mention it now, but it is definitely still there :-(

Whether it involves Communities or the wider IET site, I couldn't say, but certainly I hit it way too often.