AGI Continuing Professional Development Action Working Group - 2012

As part of the AGI operational plan for 2012, a CPD AWG was set up. The aim of the group is as follows:
AIM: to bring focus to expanding the CPD programme through increasing the range of services offered to members and strengthening the association between all our membership services and activity with the CPD scheme.

We put out a call to the membership to take part in the CPD Action Working Group. In its first meeting the AWG came up with six clear areas of activity. These were approved by AGI council in June. Work has already started on Areas 1, 2, 3 and 4 but we would welcome feedback from the membership on all ideas.

Please feedback to cpd@agi.org.uk

The six key areas are:

1. Understanding what members actually want from AGI
We need to understand what the members want from AGI in terms of CPD
The group will engage with the membership through the following means:

• AGI GeoCommunity
• Social Media
• Short Member Survey

2. Clarification of the CPD offering from AGI
It is clear from the discussion in the group that we to review our communication about CPD to AGI members. Key messages include:
• CPD is a stepping stone to greater responsibility
• CPD is not just about attending events
• What can people do to attain CPD, need examples
• Give advice on the amount of CPD that should be collected annually
• Link all of this to a skills /competency framework

There is also an opportunity to liaise with corporate members directly here, for example:
• Communicate to corporate members the importance of CPD and what AGI can offer in terms of events to encourage promotion of AGI events within the corporate members – it is a cheap way for them to send staff to events
• Added benefit to tailor AGI events to your company (re-use materials)
• GI for non-GI staff; help corporates to engage about GI with their non-GI staff
• Promote the more general skills based events to non-GI staff in the organisation so they get more value from their membership

3. Requirement for a Skills Framework
People need a high level framework to hang their CPD onto so AGI should give some guidance. This group could develop a Skills Framework for AGI Members.
• This would have multiple uses:
o It could be a template for a bespoke CPD scheme that AGI corporate members could pick up and alter to suit their organisation (benefit of membership)
o AGI could accredit the corporate members who adopt this as they have achieved a specific level of implementation. They can say their “people” are being offered suitable CPD and a framework to work in
o We promote to previous corporate members to encourage them to re-join
o It may create more demand for the AGI CPD scheme
o It would attract students and should be marketed to them
o We would also include generalise skills (presentation, project management etc)

4. Support for Events which support CPD
It is recognised that members are not able to attend events like they used to be able to however it is believed there is still an appetite for staff to attend the “right” events if they are deemed relevant.
• This group could suggest a series of events (perhaps evening sessions) that may be more generalist and so are not covered by the SIG’s. There should be a focus on practical elements as well. There should also be links with the regions for this.
• At the same time, the group would investigate with the AGI Team, opportunities to use technology to make event content more available to more remote members

5. Building Links to other organisations
Many attendees suggested that we should link to other organisations including those outside of our own discipline. This would have many benefits:
• Tie in our CPD scheme with other related disciplines e.g. many others disciplines are using GIS and could use some of our activities to count towards their CPD
• Link to other disciplines to allow our members to gain CPD from their schemes
• Get people from other membership orgs to run twilight sessions specifically for our members (ie make sure AGI is not always creating events that may be being run elsewhere)
• Work with other membership orgs to promote our activities, and perhaps link into joint membership discount.

6. Education
There are also potential benefits for AGI’s educational members
• Help with student placements – difficult for orgs to do this – AGI provide matchmaking services
• Engage with informal student groups
• A lot of the Geog / GIS dept do a lot of research – as a member could you have access to journals at a   reduced rate
• Should we also be contacting geography disciplines to promote our CPD, not just GI specific courses.   Could use the RGS list to contact geog depts