Hear from John-Paul Ashton, NTDC Specialist Advisor and CPD Central Lead, on the improvements and updates we’ve been making to CPD Central to keep up with the ever-changing needs of the technical community.
The NTDC have been working really hard to keep CPD Central current and meet the needs of the professional technical community. We released CPD Central originally as a tool designed for recording activities and sharing quick tasks with supervisees.
Since then, we have been upgrading the functionality of CPD Central to make this professional online tool more helpful to support your:
- Professional Development
- Supervisory Feedback
- Annual Appraisals and Staff Development
Enhancing Tasks and Introducing Drafts
The Tasks side of CPD Central has been completely revamped with the system now capable of automatically updating the status of task submissions (open, due or closed), the ability to give a feedback level (needs improvement, good or outstanding) and a comments thread for supervisors and supervisees to communicate about the task in hand.
We have also updated the system so that it automatically saves entries into drafts, just for those times when work can become busy or you have to leave to go open the door for the postman. For whatever reason that takes you away from your account, it will still automatically logout to keep all your data secure, but will save all your work beforehand. What’s more, your drafts will be clearly labelled and visible at the top of your record to remind you the next time you log in to complete the entry.
Flexible Note Entries
We have added in another form to complete your activity logs with. You can still use the activity form to complete entries in line with the Science Council and Engineering Council professional registrations. You can now also complete a note entry, which gives you more flexibility to create an activity around your own title entries. This is useful if you have specific questions and SMART goals required for annual appraisals.
Easily Generating Reports
When it comes to needing to submit a report for either a CPD renewal, for an annual appraisal, or you would like a report of the activities you have carried out within a specific period for your professional portfolio, you can generate this very easily in one organised PDF report.
The reason we make these changes to CPD Central is to keep up-to-date with the needs of our technical community and we use our partners’ feedback to update the system so that it works best for them and technicians within Higher Education and Research Institutes. We will continue to work with our partners to shape the system so that its functionality fulfils the ever changing needs of our technical community.
CPD Central is a free benefit for our Partner Affiliates, however we do also have opportunities for you and your organisations to make the most of our system through our tailored packages if you are not yet an NTDC Partner Affiliate. Find out more about CPD Central by clicking here or you can contact us at enquires@cpdcentral.online.
