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Effective is crucial for building knowledge, enhancing educational praxis, and improving student outcomes in higher education. OER Africa’s CPD framework space offers:

  • academics and academic librarians a structured,
  • resource-rich pathway to professional growth,
  • and impactful teaching and learning experiences.

This space is designed to help you explore comprehensive and access curated resources that correspond to the frameworks. Each resource provides suggestions for how it might be deployed in a CPD intervention.

What is CPD?

CPD refers to the activities and learning that professionals undertake to enhance their skills and knowledge. In higher education, CPD is about more than individual growth; it is about cultivating changes in teaching practices that lead to improved student learning outcomes. CPD can empower academics and academic librarians to adapt to the evolving demands of higher education, stay informed of best practices, and continuously build their expertise.

What are CPD Frameworks?

A CPD framework is a structured planning guide designed to support the career development of higher education professionals. While CPD can often happen informally, a framework helps make the process more intentional and focussed, ensuring that academic and academic librarian CPD aligns with institutional goals. CPD frameworks are particularly valuable for navigating the growing complexity in higher education, where professionals face pressures from massification, digitalization, and the need for career advancement (Inamorato, Gausas, Mackeviciute, Jotatutyte, & Martinaitis, 2019).

CPD Frameworks

Academics

CPD Framework for Academics

The framework consists of domains and capability descriptors.

There are 11 domains, of which OER Africa is developing four key domains initially. These are: 

  • Course Design
  • Materials Development
  • Facilitating Learning
  • Effective Assessment and Feedback.

Each domain contains capability descriptors that break the domain down into smaller units.

Academic and Research Librarians

CPD Framework for Academic and Research Librarians

This CPD framework is for academic and research librarians in all African tertiary and research institutions. Using the framework can bring about planned, ongoing, and continuous learning for African academic and research librarians for improved service delivery, better engagement with knowledge trends, and increased ability to integrate useful technology into information provision.

The framework consists of ten domains and corresponding capability descriptors.

CourseDesign MaterialsDevelopment FacilitatingLearning EffectiveAssessmentand Feedback LeadershipandManagementin HE LearningAnalytics CurriculumQualityAssurance Research Outreach Post-GraduationSupervision SubjectKnowledge for Academics CPDFramework OpenKnowledge Copyright andLicensing DigitalKnowledgeManagement LibraryExcellence LibraryDataManagement UserCommunityEngagement E-Learning Partnerships andCollaboration Library Grants Advocacy for AcademicLibrarians CPDFramework

Key Domains for Academic and Research Librarians

Digital Knowledge Management

Domain description

Organizing, processing, preserving and creating access points for digital knowledge in different formats.

View All Domain Resources

Key Domains for Academics

How to use the CPD Framework

Here, we suggest two ways in which you or your institution can use the frameworks, but institutions and individuals are free to use it to suit their own purposes.

Academics

Guidance for Academics

  • A university department may decide to conduct a workshop on assessment for its academic staff. It can narrow the focus by choosing one or more of the capability descriptors for the effective assessment and feedback domain.
  • An institution may wish to foreground some overarching themes for CPD based on their own context. For example, a university in southern Africa might focus on workplace skills, entrepreneurship, social justice, and inclusion. An institution could integrate the theme of workplace skills for example, into one or more of the domains in the framework.

Refer to pages 4 and 5 of the academics framework document for more information.

Academic Librarians

Guidance for Academic Librarians

  • An academic library may decide to conduct a workshop on Open Knowledge or Digital Knowledge Management for its academic library. It can narrow the focus by choosing one or more capability descriptors for the corresponding domains.
  • An institution may wish to conduct CPD programmes for different professionals based on their own context. For example, a university in Kenya might adopt the framework for academic librarians and focus on domains such as Copyright and Licensing, E-Learning, and Partnerships and Collaborations, recognizing the library's crucial role in supporting the launch of a distance education programme for select faculties. The institution could integrate the theme of distance education, for example, into one or more of the domains in the framework.

Refer to pages 5 and 6 of the academic librarian framework document for more information.

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