Online Continuing Professional Development - Why Universities are Missing Out
Jonathan Darby, Keith Williams
The Open University, United Kingdom
The Training Gateway estimates that HE has between 5 and 9 percent of the UK market for Continuing Professional Development (CPD). For CPD delivered via the Internet the figure is lower, almost certainly less than 5 percent. There are no significantly-sized Online CPD programmes offered by any UK HEI. CPD is an area in which it would seem HEIs have the potential to contribute substantially more than they do at present. This unrealised potential is particularly true of Online CPD where offerings from HEIs are still often experimental in nature.In 2008, supported by HEFCE’s Strategic Development Fund,The Open University, in partnership with the Universities of Cambridge, Derby, London (External System) and the Professional Associations Research Network set out to find out just what was stopping HEIs from succeeding in the online CPD market and what they needed to do differently.The presentation will share the results of the project which covered:1) Market analysis: Based on surveys of professional body members and training manager we sought to understand what is attractive about what HEIs have to offer and what is not.2) Institutional analysis: What aspects of the way HEIs operate impede online CPD programmes and what needs to change?3) Course models: How can we use our knowledge of pedagogy to design elearning course models for CPD that are both economic and effective?4) Accreditation: How can short courses and other professional learning activities be aggregated to offer worthwhile academic credit?5) Engagement and marketing: Through the vehicle of a prototype multi-institution portal we explored one avenue to cost-effective marketing underpinned by professional social networking tools.Treating online CPD as just a scaled down version of online degree programmes has clearly not worked well for HEIs. The work reported on offers some pointers and “worked examples” for how HE could command a much larger share of the online CPD market if it is so minded.No references included