Supporting Training, CPD and Staff Exchange for Business and Community Engagement Practitioners

This project aimed to better serve the Continuing Professional Development (CPD) needs of people working in further and higher education who are involved in Business and Community Engagement (BCE).

It is part of JISC's Business and Community Engagement programme and being delivered by JISC Advance.

The project completed at the end of June 2010. A follow-up project has been funded for 2010-2012 entitled Supporting and Embedding CPD for Business and Community Engagement.

Project Activities

The first phase of the project carried out a training need analysis of Business and Community Engagement practitioners by means of a workshop, an online survey and a series of in-depth telephone interviews.

Based on the outcomes of the analysis, the final phase of the project produced a series of resources:

• A pilot online skills self-evaluation based on the AURIL (Association for University Research and Industry Links) CPD Framework
• A collection of training resources categorised according to the same framework so that practitioners can directly determine what training is available that matches their self-diagnosed training needs
• A set of workshops at which relevant training was sampled with materials subsequently made available online
• A set of resources and case studies to support institutional staff development in which aspects of Business and Community Engagement and effective methods of training and CPD can be explored

Project Background

A JISC-funded user needs study of the Business and Community Engagement community identified "a desire for an integrated and accessible package of training opportunities". and recommended that JISC co-ordinate training opportunities in order to provide an integrated training programme.

The project enabled a more strategic approach to the BCE training support JISC Advance services provide, allowing gaps to be filled - both in supporting current provision outside JISC and in JISC's own provision - and national staff development strategies to be better supported.

The focus will be on supporting existing training provision rather than trying to 're-invent the wheel'. This was achieved by working closely with key stakeholders, including AURIL, the Institute of Knowledge Transfer and PraxisUNICO.