Preparing your application

Preparing your application: Recording  your CPD activities

It is good practice to keep a record and a reflective commentary about your ongoing professional development activities. This can then be used to inform an individual route application.  You might record:

• an outline of the events in which you have been involved, ranging from conversations and planning within your discipline team, to team teaching activities, to conferences or workshops attended or facilitated.
• a commentary on your personal learning as a result, your increased understanding and integration of scholarship, and further considerations you wish to follow up in your practice or CPD planning.

Since your CPD record is primarily for you, the format for recording is also flexible.  For example, you may wish to: 

• document your activities as a story or conversation, in which, after outlining the activity itself, you consider and reflect on the personal learning you have undertaken. You may wish to use the UKPSF Areas of Activity, Core Knowledge and Professional Values as guidance, or prefer to combine these into one dialogue.
• use another method of recording, e.g. that specified by your professional body
• store your file on your hard drive, personal space on Sharepoint, or into the e- Portfolio tool in Blackboard.

You may wish to also consider: 

•  how your ongoing evidence and reflective activity reflects the UKPSF Descriptor appropriate to you and your role
• using your record for peer discussion through support networks/structures how this evidence could be used within the Staff Development and Performance Review (SDPR) process.

CPD activities and opportunities

There is a wide range of activities you may currently do, or wish to undertake for development. They include:

 Validated programmes leading to a qualification, for example:

• Advance HE accredited Post Graduate Certificate in Teaching in Higher Education (PGCTHE).  Completing the first module will also make you eligible for an associate fellowship (AFHEA) and completing both modules will make you eligible for a fellowship (FHEA).

Specific planned non-validated  activities

• Aberystwyth’s CPD workshop programme Teaching CPD Workshops
• Department Peer Observation of Teaching process.
• Learning through co-working with someone more skilled or knowledgeable, through work-shadowing, through getting feedback from a trusted ‘critical friend’, through job swap opportunities, through work placement outside the normal work setting
• Learning and teaching conferences
• Lectures and workshops by invited speakers
• Induction programme for new appointments
• External conferences, seminars etc in learning and teaching, e.g. Advance HE external conference, Staff and Educational Development Association (SEDA) conference, Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) conference
• External conferences or seminars within the discipline
• Funded or non-funded pedagogic projects, research or secondments, e.g. through educational bodies such as Advance HE, JISC (Joint Information Systems Committee), or through a professional body, and the publication / dissemination of research findings
• Engagement with pedagogic literature, including subject-based pedagogic resources on the Higher Education Academy’s website
• Development of new resources, e.g. website resources, resource for the Advance HE network
• Development of new programmes/ modules, new policy documents
• Mentoring other staff (e.g. probationary mentoring, PGCTHE mentor), teaching other staff
• Developing a new specialism, taking on a new role, new responsibility 

Specific  responsibilities  (non-validated) within  professional role

• Programme director, year tutor 
• External examiner
• Involvement in teaching team meetings re quality enhancement
• Involvement with various committees and working parties, e.g. learning and teaching, assessment, disability, widening access, equality, health and safety, employanility, eLearning
• Involvement with committees, working parties and other activities with professional body
• Partnerships and other collaborative activities with other HEIs, FE, SMEs and other businesses, Skills Councils

Workshops and support for individual route applications

CDSAP workshops to assist staff with individual route applications leading up to the panel submission dates.

Application Checklist          Download Checklist: Application Checklist