Tag Archives: learning

A balance of Verifiable and Non-Verifiable CPD

23 Friday Jan 2015

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The next comment I want to analyse from the CPD and Learning Survey is:

Given the speed of change in IT, I think an average of 2 to 3 hours per week in a mix of verifiable ( e.g. courses (on-line or physical)) and unverifiable- Blogs, papers, news sources, hands on etc.should be a minimum to aim for.

This is a great comment that supports CPD (Continuing Professional Development) in general.

2 to 3 hours a week is a great way of splitting development and learning over a calendar year.  Minus a 4 week holiday, this would give anywhere between 96 and 144 hours of training which is almost double what the CPD and Learning Survey came up with as a recommendation for the amount of time spent on CDP Development. This is not a bad thing at all as spreading training out allows you to learn, digest and try out the things you have learnt.

As the world of technology is developing and moving at a very fast pace, spreading the learning out allows you to change direction if needed to a new area that you need to focus on.

Identifying your training into two main categories of Verifiable and Non-Verifiable is a normal requirement of most CPD recording systems and industries.

Verifiable is where you can prove that the training has been completed such as:

  • Attendance on a Course (Course Certificate)
  • Online Course – Certificates of completion
  • Online Course – Test results
  • Vendor Certifications
  • Research with a resultant paper published
  • Brown Bag training (Lunch and Learns) where attendance is recorded

Non-Verifiable is where you cannot prove the learning but have carried out self learning. This includes:

  • Reading of industry magazine articles / technical reading
  • Reading blogs
  • Courses not offering any certificates of completion or test results
  • Learning as part of meetings and on job training
  • Learning as part of an assigned Project (unless any of the Verifiable results can be achieved)

These lists are by no means exhaustive or may alter depending on which governing body the CPD is for, but show examples of what could be classed in each category.

There is no hard an fast rule on how much Verifiable vs Non-Verifiable should be achieved as part of any CPD, however it is always better to have a Verifiable as it is easier to prove the learning. I would suggest a 60/40 or 70/30 split in favor of Verifiable.

“My Time, My Development”

22 Thursday Jan 2015

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From the recent CPD and Learning Survey that I recently ran, I want to now start looking at the comments that have been left by the respondents. Rather than just list them, I will blog about them individually or group a couple as some of the comments provide an interesting insight into how CPD (Continuous Professional Development) is considered.

All entries to this survey were anonymous.

The first comment I want to analyse is:

Anything I do is on my own time and for my own personal development

From my experiences working and learning, I have found that any learning done in and outside work around the areas that I do during my daily working career have been applied without thinking about it. Personally I would find it hard to apply a level of consciousness to separate any learning done in my own time to my job, unless it was a very different type of learning (such as learning to canoe or play the piano).

There is a need for employers to support development of its employees which can take many different formats such as:

  • Time
  • Courses
  • Exam fees
  • Brown Bag Learning (lunchtime learning sessions)

Providing support does provide a better culture for learning in the workplace, but this is a two way street and employers may require you to develop your skills with the same time they provide inside work as outside work.

Looking out across the various industries and their CPD requirement, some industry verticals have to do development to keep their qualifications such as the medical profession. There is a mixed bag of support and no support for employees, however they are doing it as part of their daily routines.

At the end of the day CPD is a choice for the individual and how much time you are willing to invest in your own development. To pinch a bit of Shakespeare (with a tweak):

To CPD or not to CPD that is the question?

For me the answer to this is simple. If you do not decide to carry out your own CPD, others around you most probably are.

The next generations of IT Professionals are already learning from an early age supported by Government Educational Curriculum’s.

These types of support will bolster the IT Industry and with more choosing it as a career also drive towards the Era of the Contextual Web. The next generation will develop key skills at an early age that they can just create the tools and applications that they need when they want them. Maybe they wont spend much time playing the xBox or Playstation, but coding them instead.

The next level of Innovation and entrepreneurship may just come from a 10-11 year old!

Learning can feel like “Keeping up with the Jones” and a “marathon” at times, but if you do not have a plan to develop, you may be on the pavement cheering those who do by.

Imagine Programming

20 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Programming

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Following on from my post on Doctor Who: Friendly Dalek teaches you to code, Microsoft have Microsoft Imagine which is another initiative to take the younger and older generations through coding using simple tools and encourages them to develop games and applications (no Cybermen to shoot here though).

Games Development using:

  • Kodu Game Lab
  • TouchDevelop
  • Project Spark
  • SmallBasic
  • Free Tools
  • Online Learning

Apps Development using:

  • TouchDevelop
  • Windows App Studio
  • SmallBasic
  • WebMatrix
  • Free Tools
  • Online Learning

“We want to empower students of all ages and skill levels with the right tools, projects, and opportunities so that they can learn to create, code, and develop. Whether it’s a ten-year-old making her first game or a university senior building projects for their first job application, Microsoft can provide what they need, for free, today.” – Steve Guggenheimer, Microsoft

The race is on to capture the developing and programming community with new, easy and innovative ways to create games and apps.

Sources:

http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/imagine
http://blogs.msdn.com/b/stevengu/archive/2014/12/08/introducing-microsoft-imagine-for-student-developers-of-all-ages.aspx

How much CPD/Training should you be doing?

19 Monday Jan 2015

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Following on from the results of the Survey that I recently ran (Results from IT Professionals and CPD Survey) the below is some further analysis on the results.

Looking at the data in Question 4 against the data in Question 6

  • Q4. How many hours do you complete annually developing/learning?
  • Q6. How many hours do you think IT Professionals should spend on CPD annually?

shows that the majority, 15 respondents think they should be doing more training than they actually are managing. 3 have indicated the level they are doing is about right and 3 consider they should be doing less.

CPD Results

Having graphed these results the graph look rather like a character from an old computer game.

CPDTraining

Perhaps the title of the blog post should have been “Eating a slice of the Training Pie!”.

The results averages out at about 57 hours above what the respondents have recorded as being done at the moment.

The respondents with the same level of training  average at doing 96 hours.

The respondents looking at less training average at doing 23 hours less.

So how much more training should you be doing?

Overall the respondents were fairly even across the number of hours that should be carried out annually.

Survey Results - Number of CPD Hours that should be carried out Annually

Survey Results – Number of CPD Hours that should be carried out Annually

Comparing to other industries (IT Professionals and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Hours)

Table of CPD across different Industries

Table of CPD across different Industries

the highest vote by respondents in the survey was 40-50 hours. Looking at other professions this feels about right as a reasonable level of development. and should perhaps be where in the main people looking to develop should try to achieve per annum.

I would welcome any other views on this.

Results from IT Professionals and CPD Survey

16 Friday Jan 2015

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I have analysed the results for the IT Professionals and CPD survey I have been running recently and this blog post is to show them.

There were 21 replies to the survey. I would have liked more, however the results illustrate a sample of what IT Professionals are doing for development and CPD.

Remembering of course not to get too pulled into the “Echo Chamber Effect” https://maxhemingway.com/2015/01/13/the-echo-chamber-effect/

The survey covered 7 questions and out of the 21 replies, some of the questions have 1 reply skipped and some have none. The skips were across different replies so this is not one reply missing questions.

In this blog post I will show the initial survey results, then I will go into more analysis, details and thoughts around the responses in further blog posts.

(click on the graphs if you want to see a larger version)

Question 1: Do you belong to a Professional Body?

With this question I was aiming to see how many replies are influenced by a professional body and their rules on CPD (Continuing Professional Development) and Learning.

Out of the 21 replies, all 21 responded to this question.

  • 28.57% (6 replies) – Yes
  • 71.43% (15 replies) – No

Q1 Prof Body

There are lots of professional bodies in the industry today with some being more stronger than others with memberships. I was expecting fewer Yes votes to this question, but was pleasantly surprised to see just under a 3rd being members of a Professional Body.

Question 2: Which Professional Body do you belong to?

Following on from Question 1 I was then looking to find out what Professional Bodies were represented in the survey. I listed a few Professional Bodies, but also gave the option for other bodies to be entered.

The results below show the surveys listed Professional Bodies – not the manual entered ones.

Out of the 21 replies, 15 responded to this question and 6 skipped.

  • 80% (15 replies) – None
  • 20% (3 replies) – British Computer Society

Q2 Prof Body

Out of the other comments the following Professional Bodies were listed, but not recorded in the above results, so out of the 6 skipped – 3 replied with other answers:

  • IET (1 reply)
  • TOGAF (1 reply)
  • PMI (1 reply)

1 Reply had TOGAF as a result as this is more an Architectural Methodology than a Professional Body. Wondered if they meant member of the Open Group instead?

Question 3: Do you do any development / learning annually?

In the next Question I wanted to find out how many replies carried out learning and development.

Out of the 21 replies, 20 responded to this question and 1 skipped.

  • 95% (19 replies) – Yes
  • 5% (1 replies) – No

Q3 Annual Learn

Not sure why 1 reply skipped this question!

Question 4: How many hours do you complete annually developing/learning?

Out of the 21 replies, 20 responded to this question and 1 skipped. Based on the last question and going into the results, the reply that said no skipped this question and the reply that skipped the previous question responded to this question. So the replies to this question do align to the previous one.

  • 5%   – 0-10 Hours (1 reply)
  • 15% – 10-20 Hours (3 replies)
  • 15% – 20-30 Hours (3 replies)
  • 10% – 30-40 Hours (2 replies)
  • 10% – 40-50 Hours (2 replies)
  • 10% – 50-60 Hours (2 replies)
  • 0%   – 60-70 Hours (0 replies)
  • 10% – 70-80 Hours (2 replies)
  • 0%   – 80-90 Hours (0 replies)
  • 5%   – 90-100 Hours (1 replies)
  • 15% – 100-150 Hours (3 replies)
  • 5%   – 150-200 Hours (1 reply)
  • 0%   – 200+ Hours (0 replies)

Q4. Hours Dev

There is quite a spread over the replies illustrating that although most of the respondents carried out annual development and learning there are differences as to how much everyone actually does.

There was one comment on this question

  • Depends if you include project related development (i.e. doing some in the course of a project you’ve never done before)

Question 5: Do you record this learning in a CPD Plan

Out of the 21 replies, all 21 responded to this question.

  • 33.33% (7 replies) – Yes
  • 66.67% (14 replies) – No

Q5. Rec Plan

These results are roughly in line with question 1 which is interesting at the initial view to ask the question are these CPD’s influenced by a Professional Body or other things. More analysis of the results is needed here.

Question 6: How many hours do you think IT Professionals should spend on CPD annually?

Out of the 21 replies, 20 responded to this question and 1 skipped.

  • 0%   – 0-10 Hours (0 reply)
  • 0% – 10-20 Hours (0 replies)
  • 0% – 20-30 Hours (0 replies)
  • 10% – 30-40 Hours (2 replies)
  • 20% – 40-50 Hours (4 replies)
  • 15% – 50-60 Hours (3 replies)
  • 0%   – 60-70 Hours (0 replies)
  • 10% – 70-80 Hours (2 replies)
  • 0%   – 80-90 Hours (0 replies)
  • 5%   – 90-100 Hours (1 replies)
  • 15% – 100-150 Hours (3 replies)
  • 15% – 150-200 Hours (3 reply)

Q6. How Many

I will perform some more analysis between questions 4 and 6 to see if there are any correlations between what respondents do annually and what they think should be done annually. More analysis of the results is needed here.

Initially though the graphs show that at least 7 respondents think that they should be doing more than they actually are.

There was one comment on this question

  • 1 hour daily

Question 7 : Any other comments you would like to add on the subject of Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Hours for IT Professionals?

This was an open question to allow the respondents to. Here are couple of the replies. I will analyse these and the other responses further in another blog post.

  • Given the speed of change in IT, I think an average of 2 to 3 hours per week in a mix of verifiable ( e.g. courses (on-line or physical)) and unverifiable- Blogs, papers, news sources, hands on etc. should be a minimum to aim for.
  • This is really important and specially capturing and tracking that give sense of learning.

Related blog posts:

https://maxhemingway.com/2015/01/06/it-professionals-and-continuing-professional-development-cpd-hours/

https://maxhemingway.com/2015/01/12/survey-on-it-professionals-and-cpd-hours/

Open Source for DevOps Practices in a Microsoft Environment

14 Wednesday Jan 2015

Posted by in DevOps/OpsDev, Open Source

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Microsoft have just released the slides and training for Open Source for DevOps Practices via the Microsoft Virtual Academy.

The training covers 4 sessions and uses some Microsoft Tools/Services in the demonstrations/training:

  • What DevOps Means Here; Common DevOps Practices and Supporting Open Source Tooling
  • Version Control as a Communication Tool; Issue Trackers as a Coordination Tool
  • Shareable Development, Test and Deployment Environments and Automated Staging
  • Automated Testing, Whats Next?

The sessions cover the following topics:

  • DevOps Overview
  • Azure Basics + Process Tools
  • Source Code Repos + Communication
  • Reproducible Environments
  • Automated Testing
  • Deployment & Configuration Management
  • Release Management
  • Monitor + Learn

Each session is between an 1 hour and 1 hour 20 mins. Followed by a recommended next steps section at the end.

These are good sessions and demo’s if you want to integrate typical Open Source DevOps products into a Microsoft based estate. The videos and demo’s cover:

  • Azure
  • Docker
  • Vagrant
  • Packer
  • Gradle
  • Grunt
  • Salt
  • Hudson
  • Puppet
  • Chef
  • Jenkins
  • Nagios
  • Zabbix

Source: http://www.microsoftvirtualacademy.com/training-courses/open-source-for-devops-practices

The Echo Chamber Effect

13 Tuesday Jan 2015

Posted by in Productivity, Social Media

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I was chatting with a colleague in the office about the survey I am currently conducting and he suggested that I be aware of the “Echo Chamber Effect” when analysing the results. So I went off to look further into this.

So what is the “Echo Chamber Effect”. A line from Wikipedia sums this up as:

“Participants in on-line communities may find their own opinions constantly echoed back to them, which reinforces their individual belief systems.”

Source: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Echo_chamber_%28media%29

This effect appears everyday in Social Media and people may be doing it without realising or being swayed by it. As people are more socially linked and their feeds and adverts are tailored to their social and browsing habits.

One video worth watching is by Eli Pariser who presents a TED Talk on “Beware on-line filter bubbles” which shows how browsers and social media are filtering what you see based on your habits.

Source: http://www.ted.com/talks/eli_pariser_beware_online_filter_bubbles

A paper by Cass R Sunstein on The Law of Group Polarization provides some background into the “Echo Chamber Effect” and describes this as:

In brief, group polarization arises when members of a deliberating group move toward a more extreme point in whatever direction is indicated by the members’ predeliberation tendency. “Like polarized molecules, group members become even more aligned in the direction they were already tending.”

Paper located at http://www.law.uchicago.edu/files/files/91.CRS_.Polarization.pdf

Is there an antidote to this?

Maybe……. Dan Gillmor in a blog about how book “Mediactive” states:

One of the great worries about the Internet is the echo chamber effect: the notion that democratized media have given us a way to pay attention only to the people we know we’ll agree with, paying no attention to contrary views or, often, reality.

This is no idle worry. But the same digital media that make it possible to retreat into our own beliefs give us easier ways to emerge, and engage.

A key principle introduced in the first chapter was the idea of going outside your comfort zone. This has several, related facets:

  • Learn from people who live in places and cultures entirely different from your own.
  • Listen to the arguments of people you know you’ll disagree with.
  • Challenge your own assumptions.

Gillmor goes on to quote Carl Sagan and his essay called “The Fine Art of Baloney Detection,”

Try not to get overly attached to a hypothesis just because it’s yours. It’s only a way station in the pursuit of knowledge. Ask yourself why you like the idea. Compare it fairly with the alternatives. See if you can find reasons for rejecting it. If you don’t, others will.

Source: http://mediactive.com/3-8-escape-the-echo-chamber/

Source: http://www.positiveatheism.org/writ/saganbd.htm#BALONEY

There are lots of other sources available on the internet that cover the subject, but for me this has been an interesting skim across the surface highlighting the need to be aware of this and apply some treatments to the survey results so I try not to cause an Echo Chamber Effect.

Building on what I have learnt looking into this and to try and counter the “Echo Chamber Effect”, I have created the following to help me remember – STACK

  • Step Back
  • Think
  • Absorb other views
  • Challenge your thinking
  • communicate your Knowledge

I’m sure there is a better term somewhere……

Maybe once in a while we should follow this advice from Graham Chastney and put our Social Media on hold for a day and detox from it to allow time to challenge your thinking by removing the distractions:

Source: http://grahamchastney.com/2015/01/youre-being-distracted-by-that-mobile-phone-even-though-you-arent-using-it/

Survey on IT professionals and CPD Hours

12 Monday Jan 2015

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Following on from my blog on IT professionals and CPD Hours and the survey I have been running to look at I am going to keep the survey open for another week as there has not been a high response so far. I am hoping for some more responses before starting to analyse the results and publish them to give a bit more depth to the findings.

The survey can be found at:  https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FGWF9JS

Previous Blog can be found at: https://maxhemingway.com/2015/01/06/it-professionals-and-continuing-professional-development-cpd-hours/

Doctor Who: Friendly Dalek teaches you to code

09 Friday Jan 2015

Posted by in Programming

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The BBC has announced a novel way to bring coding/programming to youngsters ( following the latest UK Governments initiative to bring the next generation of IT professionals)

Using a Time Lord and their most dangerous adversary to teach 6 to 12 year old’s how to code.

The BBC has unveiled a computer game called The Doctor and the Dalek, as part of the Make it Digital initiative to get more young people into computer coding.

It is voiced by Peter Capaldi and the story, starring a friendly Dalek, is written by Doctor Who series writer Phil Ford.

A browser game playable over the internet, it is aimed at six to 12-year-olds.

The coding challenges are linked to the curriculum and can be mapped against Key Stage 2 and 3 learning outcomes.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/technology-29645991

Dr Who Game Screeshot 1

Going forward the BBC have plans to increase their footprint of bringing knowledge to the next generation under their “Make It Digital” initiative.

Alongside these BBC Learning projects we have some exciting children’s programmes coming out this Autumn that will help inspire our youngest audiences to discover the digital world and to take their journeys of digital discovery further. Dick & Dom’s Absolute Genius will become Appsolute Genius, Technobabble will look at the technology which will shape children’s lives, and Nina and the Neurons will go digital.

Source: http://www.bbc.co.uk/mediacentre/latestnews/2014/computing-coding

I have been using this with my kids to teach them some of the basics of coding and they have found the gameplay linked in with the coding tasks enjoyable. It was good to see them working round the problems presented to try and reduce the amount of commands used to match or beat the targets set.

Dr Who Game Screenshot 2

Yes I did do the challenges myself and also enjoyed it.

If you want to play the game you can find “The Doctor and the Dalek” at http://www.bbc.co.uk/cbbc/games/doctor-who-game

There is a lot of rising opportunities for the younger generations to now learn coding and computing from an early age. The UK Government has included a national curriculum for Key Stage 1 and 2.

The curriculum is available at http://www.computingatschool.org.uk/data/uploads/primary_national_curriculum_-_computing.pdf

This move should bolster entrants into the IT Industry in the future and more choosing it as a career, however also drive towards the Era of the Contextual Web. This generation of young people will develop key skills at an early age that they can just create the tools and applications that they need when they want them. Maybe they wont spend much time playing the xBox or Playstation, but coding them instead.

The next level of Innovation and entrepreneurship may just come from a 10-11 year old.

IT Professionals and Continuing Professional Development (CPD) Hours

06 Tuesday Jan 2015

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After a recent conversation with someone who works in the Dental Industry on development and learning, I learnt that they have to complete a number of CPD (Continuing Professional Development) hours a year and a minimum number over a 5 year period. Following this I carried out a short investigation into the amount CPD requirements that were recommended across different industries picking on some of most obvious top of the head ones.

Most of these are from professional bodies that people in those industries can join, some are a must join such as medical professions and there is a mandatory requirement to do the CPD or you will be struck off, or no requirement to join and therefore no requirement to complete the number of CPD hours required by that body.

CPDTable

In the world of IT there is no requirement to join a professional body nor to carry out a number of required CPD hours a year.

There is no right answer to the number of hours that you should be performing, however looking at other industries and especially those in the Project Management space which is a role that works closely with Architects – 30-40 hours annually is a good figure to aim for.

I would suggest that the wrong answer though is not doing any hours.

So what type of CPD should someone be doing? Some industries split this into Verifiable and Non-Verifiable. Attending a workshop, webinar, Lunch and Learn would be classed as Verifiable as your attendance can be recorded. Non-Verifiable would be something like read an article on a web page.

The BCS (British Computer Society) have a view around the different types of CPD http://interact.bcs.org/cpd/Types%20of%20CPD.pdf  which contains a number of categories and measures for learning. This is based around a core CPD Cycle. Although there is no set number of hours for the BCS to gain accreditation and membership you do need to show learning and development annually.

BasicCycle

So why bother with CPD?

This is easy to answer in that if you don’t, others are! Planning an amount of CPD a year will help to keep you fresh and current within your field.

I would be interested in views from others on what is the right level of CPD to achieve annually. As such I have created a survey to ask some questions and collect some answers

https://www.surveymonkey.com/s/FGWF9JS

I will run the survey for a while then publish the results in this blog when collated.

sources:
http://www.sra.org.uk/faqs/cpd/How-many-hours-of-CPD-do-I-need-to-do-.page
http://www.cim.co.uk/cpd/CPDCharteredMarketer/EarningCPDhours.aspx
http://www.gdc-uk.org/Dentalprofessionals/CPD/Pages/cpdrequirements.aspx
http://www.rics.org/uk/regulation1/compliance1/continuing-professional-development-cpd/
http://www.apm.org.uk/CPD

Click to access ChangesToTheCPDScheme.pdf

http://www.bcs.org/category/17015