Background and rationale
The recent National Strategy for Higher Education to 2030 emphasises that the same professional standards requiring continuing professional development in professions such as medicine, dentistry, law and engineering should be expected of higher education teachers (p.60). The strategy refers to the European Standards and Guidelines for Quality Assurance which provides that “Teaching staff should be given opportunities to develop and extend their teaching capacity and should be encouraged to value their skills” (p.17).
In response to the new strategy, NAIRTL intends to launch the Continuing Academic Practice Education (CAPE) initiative.
What is the CAPE initiative?
The CAPE initiative will be a mechanism to formally record and recognise the continuing professional development activities of higher education professionals as credits in academic practice. The CAPE initiative will provide an incentive to attend events that contribute to the professional development of academic staff in areas that relate to their academic practice (research, teaching and learning, supervision, service). It will do this through allocating continuing professional development credits (or CAPE credits) to participants at relevant events. NAIRTL will facilitate the process of recording and recognising CAPE credits for academic staff nationwide.
How will the CAPE initiative work?
Organisers of events (lunch time seminar series, workshops, symposia, seminars or conferences) that provide academic staff with a professional development opportunity in areas that relate to academic practice (research, teaching and learning, supervision, service) will be invited to submit their event outline and proposed learning outcomes to NAIRTL. An application form for this submission will be made available in due course. A NAIRTL CAPE working group* is currently being established and will be tasked to allocate an appropriate number of CAPE credits to relevant events. The event organiser will be invited to submit the list of participants to NAIRTL who will in turn record the participants CAPE credits. It is envisaged that event participants will also be issued with a username and password that they can use to access their CAPE record at any time. A certificate of CAPE credits will be issued on request.
CAPE Working Group members
The following groups are being invited to nominate representatives from the higher education sector to participate on the CAPE working group:
This initiative will be reviewed at the end of its first year in operation.
If you are a member of a work group, please log in here.
