Case Study: Building formal support for public engagement into CPD Programmes

Introduction

“For learning to take place with any kind of efficiency people must be motivated. To be motivated, they must become interested. And they become interested when they are actively working on projects which they can relate to their values and goals in life.”         Gus Tuberville, President, William Penn College

 To create successful layers and types of public engagement within an institution, staff, students and researchers need to understand more about the ethos and principles of public engagement as well as the pragmatics.

Several Beacons have been involved in setting up formal support for CPD programmes in public engagement including The Edinburgh Beltane, a partnership comprised of six Higher Education Institution partners and ten other organisations.  Although the scale of this partnership is relatively unusual, the process of establishing the programme can be applied to individual institutions.

Project description

Our objective when we set out on this project was to provide a clear overview of the range of public engagement activities, the training and development opportunities available, and a way to support a strategic approach to Professional Development.

The situation when we began was that training providers in the different institutions were running several courses which developed public engagement skills. However, they weren’t described as public engagement courses and there was no central point of information about opportunities available. A Training and Development working group was established in autumn 2008 to coordinate these training and development opportunities.  This group comprised people with backgrounds in HR, postgraduate skills development and academic teaching from different partner institutions.

1. Defining public engagement & skills

An important starting point led by Beacon project manager Dr Heather Rea was to agree a shared broad definition of public engagement. This enabled us to publish the following definition:

‘The Edinburgh Beltane defines public engagement as a spectrum of activities which are undertaken to share the knowledge generated in academic and research institutions with the public. It generates mutual benefit - with all parties learning from each other through sharing knowledge, expertise and skills. It does not include activities solely for commercialisation, PR, recruitment, schools outreach or widening participation’.  We also provided a diagram to convey the range of activities and purposes involved: 

2. Skills Framework

A skills framework was developed on the skills required to do these activities well. The first table focuses on ‘doing’ public engagement, the second on ‘managing’ public engagement.

These tables were developed by a sub-section of the training group in 2009 and have been continually refined.

Note: The tables developed are very specific to the needs of the Beltane partner institutions, particularly the focus on the project management of public engagement. The NCCPE have spent considerable time developing an Attributes Framework in consultation with a wide range of stakeholders. This framework is more comprehensive and may be a more useful starting point. It is available to download in the resources section of the site.

After the tables had been agreed, the Edinburgh Beltane training providers identified any courses which developed at least one of these skills. Although providers run few ‘public engagement’ courses, using a skills approach meant that a number of other courses were identified as being relevant.

The tables covered a number of skills: gaps in training were expected. However, rather than immediately develop new courses to fill these gaps. 2010 – 2011 is being used as a pilot year to assess the demand for training in particular areas.

3. Online database of courses

To find out about training opportunities, the training group decided to develop a content management system / online database to collate the course information. Each training provider has a log – in to the database to update their own courses. Staff and students can browse opportunities, and also have the option of logging in to create their own personal development tracker. People can set goals; select a schedule of courses and keep a reflective journal of their progress. This information can then be used in an appraisal or to receive a Beltane Certificate.

4. Beltane Certificate

The Beltane partner institutions decided to establish a Beltane Certificate in public engagement.  The aim of the certificate is to offer staff and students with a strong interest in public engagement a more in-depth approach, tailored to their personal circumstances, and to recognise their commitment. Although anyone can do the Certificate, it is expected to most popular with PhD students and early career researchers either as a way to add value to their CV for future research posts, or to gain experience which could lead to work in other areas, e.g. the media or education.

From an institution’s perspective, the Certificate provides a focus for sharing public engagement opportunities and practice between different providers across different institutions, and it is a useful device for marketing those opportunities to researchers, support staff and their line managers. 

The certificate is neither credit-bearing nor formally accredited but it may be developed as a Postgraduate Certificate qualification at a later date. It will be based on:

• Attending a minimum number of courses (reaching a set number of Edinburgh Beltane credits)
• Evidence of practical experience
• Evidence of personal reflection and self-evaluation
• Attending an informal interview/review session with the Beltane team

The steps below give an overview of the Beltane Certification process:

Step 2: Find and attend training courses relevant to your goals

The training group are still finalising the details and the Certificate is expected to launch during the 2010 – 2011 academic year.

5. Supporting PE Providers

There are already a number of reciprocal agreements between Beltane partner institutions but the shared database and PE programme is leading to more opportunities for training providers to meet and discuss courses. There are plans to establish a network of PE training providers and run some ‘train the trainer events’.

Success factors

The training working group was essential. Different people brought a range of perspectives to initial proposals and helped to ensure proposals could be implemented in partner institutions.

• The institutions in the Beltane partnership had well established staff and student training programmes and were keen to boost the training provision for public engagement. There was enthusiasm to achieve this by sharing courses and pooling information, and there were already arrangements in place to share courses between institutions.
• Public engagement can be quite a vague term. A skills approach made it easier for training providers to identify relevant courses and resulted in more courses being included in the database.
• The database is launching in 2010 so it is too early to comment on the overall success (or not) of the online system. However, the proposals have been welcomed by nearly all the training providers. This is mainly because the training providers shaped the proposals during the development stages.

Next steps

The Beltane Certificate launched in 2010. If things progress well, there is some interest into developing this further into a postgraduate certificate in public engagement, similar to the postgraduate certificate in university teaching already offered by these institutions.

Key partners

Training providers based in The Edinburgh Beltane Higher Education Institutions:

• Edinburgh Napier University 
• Heriot Watt University 
• Queen Margaret University 
• The University of Edinburgh 
• The UHI Millennium Institute 

Resources

The Edinburgh Beltane's website provides the landing page for opportunities to get involved in training & development. 

Other approaches to CPD Programmes are included in the Learning Resources section.