In the past year it’s been hard to make much time for professional development, or at least the kind of professional development you can plan.
Like many in my position, I had a huge amount of professional development focused on keeping my organisation running in a crisis, emergency governance, financial crisis management and so forth.
Things are STILL extremely busy, and look like they will continue to be for some time to come, but I am making time do actually plan some CPD beyond giving talks and attending (virtual) conferences.
Leading Virtual Teams
Most of my focus just now is on writing a book and developing my coaching practice on leading virtual teams. The book sets out to explore what leading virtual teams is really like drawing on years of experience captured in blog posts, podcasts and presentations as a model of open leadership. I will discuss questions such as:
- How do you effectively manage a crisis as a virtual team?
- How do you address personal problems?
- What do virtual Team Days look like when they work really well?
- How do you create those all important water cooler moments?
Anti-Racism in Learning Technology
I am also educating myself more about what I can do to help anti-racism in Learning Technology, and I recently joined the anti-racism & learning technology group. If you’d like to learn more about the work of the group, there is a series of blog posts on the #altc blog which provide a great starting point:
- The Anti-Racism & Learning Technology Community of Practice: An Introduction-Part 1 of 4
- The Anti-Racism & Learning Technology Community of Practice: Guidance for Content Developers -Part 2 of 4
- The Anti-Racism & Learning Technology Community of Practice: Research Connected Activities -Part 3 of 4
- The Anti-Racism & Learning Technology Community of Practice: Recruitment and Staff Development- Part 4 of 4
There is also a really interesting post focused on frameworks as a starting point for anti-racism content development.
Updating my Senior CMALT Portfolio
All of this will feed into the main CPD project for this autumn, which is to update my Senior CMALT Portfolio. I gained Senior CMALT as part of the first pilot group in October 2018, and I found the process extremely useful.
The portfolio has to be reviewed and updated every three years, adding sections on professional development undertaken and future plans. If you would like to have a look at the full version of my Senior CMALT portfolio, you can access the Google doc version and the evidence folder.
Since then, the scheme has developed further and there are now Open Badges for CMALT in the offing, too, which I am looking forward to.
It’s amazing to look back at my portfolio and reflect on how much has happened since I wrote it in 2018. Three years, especially in times of crisis, feels like a long time indeed, and it will be useful for me to take a step back and take stock.
Cover image: Photo by Samantha Gades on Unsplash