Continuing Professional Development

CPD can help you identify areas for development and ways to address them, as well as your strengths and achievements.  By so doing you are also demonstrating your commitment to yourself and your profession. This page highlights University resources, training and frameworks that can support your CPD.

The University's Digital Skills Programme provides hundreds of courses to staff and students. Staff courses cover everything from using the virtual learning environment to writing generative AI prompts for ELM. Courses run throughout the academic year, delivered by expert trainers.

If you're an academic looking for a fast way to find training relevant to your role, then bookmark our Digital Skills for Academics SharePoint site where you can explore recommended training pathways based on your role or practice. Examples include training for teachers, training for those teaching blended on campus, training for those with an interest in digital inclusivity, training for those who teach online. 

If you're not sure where to start then using the Digital Skills Framework can help you evaluate your current levels of digital capability, reflect on your development needs, plan your development path and find resources to help you develop your skills. 

One of the features of the Framework is the JISC Digital Discovery Tool, a self-evaluation reflection exercise that results in an individual report which can form the basis of a professional development plan.

All staff have free access to 25,000 high quality videos courses in business, creative and technical skills on LinkedIn Learning.  All you need to do is activate your account to gain access. 

In addition to developing your own skills, you may want to consider using LinkedIn Learning to create supplementary learning pathways for your students. We can support you in doing this - contact jmori@ed.ac.uk for more information.

Academic Blogging is the use of blogging within Higher Education. It encompasses a broad range of use cases, including accredited learning and teaching activities, research engagement, personal academic / professional development blogs, or showcasing aspects of life at the University.

Our WordPress platform will allow you to create a blog you can use to promote your research or as a place to reflect on your teaching practice. Depending on the nature of your blog, you can decide whether external people can see it, if it is private to you, or viewable by University members only. You can also link this blog into your University Staff Profile.

There are numerous resources to support your CPD around the practice of learning technology, including two communities that you might find can support you: our own  Learning Technology Community and the  Association for Learning Technology (ALT)  (of which the University is a Member).

Resources from the Academic Development Team at the University of Edinburgh include:

• Developing as a new Teacher
• Edinburgh Teaching Award (EdTA)
• Introduction to Academic Practice (IntroAP)
• Learning & Teaching Conference
• Postgraduate Certificate Academic Practice (PgCAP)
• Talking about Teaching