Professional development for trainers and assessors

Professional development is always on trainers and assessors minds (and the auditors).

So how do we get it?

Firstly you need to ask yourself does the RTO you work provide PD sessions?

 Often it is up to you to find PD sessions for your own benefit; and that is fair enough as trainers do have a professional responsibility to continue to learn and develop; keeping up to date with new concepts.

 However, you may find that if you can demonstrate that the professional learning contributes, either directly or indirectly, to improved student learning outcomes then they may assist you with payment of a workshop.

Here are some tips on how you can use a wide range of flexible learning options to provide professional development.  These might include, but not limited to:

• Electronic learning (webinars, teleconferences, reading articles on the internet etc)
• Conference attendance (relevant to your industry)
• Mentoring or coaching and tutoring
• Use an outside consultant to conduct in-house sessions
• Formal courses
• Short courses, workshops
• Seminars
• Discussion groups
• Technical meetings
• Learning activities in the workplace that extend the area of practice competence base.
• Network meetings
• Industry networking.
• Websites relevant to training or your field of expertise

Don’t forget to record anything you attend that is relevant to your training and assessing area. This can be as simple as a spreadsheet, but you need to provide evidence if the questions are asked.

Bye for now

Merinda Smith