Over 1,000 people join in University’s first Virtual CPD Summer School
2 July 2020
The programme featured 27 sessions from academics across the University, working together to create our inaugural free Virtual CPD Summer School.
When the UK entered lockdown, and it became clear how drastically life would change for us all, the team at the CPD Unit felt very strongly that we wanted to create a free programme of professional development activity in order to support businesses and individuals at such a difficult time.
With face to face teaching suspended due to Covid-19, we were keen to create a varied virtual programme that would provide a taster of some of our short courses, highlight the exciting and ground-breaking work being done at the University, and most importantly, deliver free professional development to the community in which we work and live.
We worked closely with academics and external CPD tutors to devise a week-long programme of live and pre-recorded webinars, Twitter Q&A takeovers and other content from across the University. Many sessions were created in the context of the pandemic, exploring how services and research is being altered; for example, palliative care in the community, how radiography reporting is affected by Covid-19, and how to prevent injury from PPE use (delivered by the Palliative Care team, School of Radiography and School of Medicine respectively).
- 27 sessions
- 13 Schools
- 26 academics
The response from our colleagues was extraordinary – people donated their time and resources, enabling us to curate a varied programme featuring content from 26 academics across all three Colleges, as well as numerous sessions from CPD trainers who usually deliver our suite of short professional development courses.
The virtual summer school was extremely well-received by the public; we welcomed over 1,100 participants, with many people attending multiple sessions across the programme. We’re currently collecting feedback from attendees, which we will share shortly.
Participants ranged from individuals to members of businesses and organisations, and dialled in from Wales, the UK and across the world. We are gathering more information but we're aware of delegates virtually attending from Nigeria, Sweden and the USA. Organisations included charities, public sector bodies, government, marketing agencies, and healthboards. Again, we will share further information shortly.
We’re delighted with the response to the first Virtual CPD Summer School. It was important for us to provide this suite of free webinars on pertinent topics in order to support businesses at such a challenging time, and also to encourage learning to aid wellbeing. This initiative is a great example of how the University is committed to being accessible and responsive to the needs of our community.
If you have any questions or queries, or if you would like to discuss a CPD programme for your organisation, please feel free to contact our friendly team:
