Professional Development and Accreditation Study

Survey Prize Awarded

Netskills has completed a study into the provision of training, staff development and accreditation for IT/IS support staff. The study investigated the nature and extent of continual professional development and formal accreditation provided for the UCISA (Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association) community.

What did we do?

Working with the Staff Development Group (SDG) of UCISA, Netskills conducted an online survey of over 300 staff, 25 in-depth interviews, produced three case studies and interviewed providers of professional development and accreditation.

The wide range of staff completing the survey included senior managers, computing officers, trainers and educational technologists.

Netskills also ran two discussion forums with assistance from SDG to discuss the initial results from the survey and provide further good quality data for the study.

Recommendations

Recommendations from the study included the need to develop a CPD framework specifically for the UCISA community. This framework would bring together the wide range of schemes available (both formal and informal), establish the level and value of current offerings and identify gaps in the provision of training and accreditation.

Funding

The study was funded through the JISC Organisational Support committee.

Survey prize

As an incentive to complete the online survey participants were entered into a draw for an Amazon voucher. The winner was Colin Bryce, Senior IT Services Manager, University of Southampton (pictured receiving his voucher from Netskills’ own Will Allen).

Download the study report

The full report from the study is available in a PDF format (600k).