Learner Developer roles can vary widely and it is important that we feel part of a community, there for support and to learn from each other. Our roles can be busy ones, often meaning a lack of time for reflection and for fully appreciating the value of what we do. For these reasons professional recognition schemes such as ALDinHE’s Cep and CeLP awards are invaluable not only to ourselves personally and our direct teams, but also to staff in the wider HE context in which we work by providing a rounded understanding of our role. This article will offer tips on producing your Cep application, focusing on the following four recommendations: carefully mapping out values, accessing critical friends, ensuring your reflective voice is present and considering your time management.
Us Learning Developers are an interesting bunch. We have often reached our LD destination after following varied paths, working in different departments and often learning on the job. We can sometimes be seen as and may sometimes feel that our position is akin to a buoy on choppy waters – we are there, people can see us (either clearly or as a distant speck in the distance), we save lives – but can everyone reach us? Is our real importance understood?
It is therefore useful and pertinent to document our work, to provide evidence of who we are, what we do, why we are here and how invaluable our services are. After all, we are more than a support service, we are an essential ingredient to academic success in HE (Tibbets and Chapman, 2023), so how we are perceived and how we perceive ourselves is really important. Taking time to reflect and document what Joubert (2024) terms the ‘betwixt and between’ space we occupy is an opportunity to experience growth, understanding and confidence. Formal professional recognition via ALDinHE Cep and CeLP awards is the perfect way to achieve this and having recently been awarded CeP, I’d like to share some insights and tips on the application process.
Tip1: Mapping out your practice to ALDinHE’s values – a leisurely pace
We don’t often get to sit and reflect or document what we are doing so this mapping may rely heavily on memory – not everyone’s best faculty! Therefore, after mapping your activities to the values, put aside time to tweak your notes in the weeks to come. Things will come back to you at all times – in conversations with colleagues/students, whilst walking the dog, in the middle of the night. Note them down – at this stage of the process everything is useful. Martensonn and Roxa (2021) talk about the ‘small elements/big changes’ aspect of our role and it’s true that we can underestimate the effects we have had on learners and our institutions. Looking at the examples given in the ‘values statement evidence’ section of the application handbook might remind you of things you had forgotten about or that you hadn’t necessarily given enough importance to. Invariably some activities will straddle values – worry about this later! Oh, and don’t forget to talk to your critical friend…
Tip 2: Bring on board critical friend(s)
Your application is personal. It’s about you but the person we are least objective about is ourselves, so the help of an outsider is invaluable. Be brave and talk through your notes with others. This could be someone in your institution or from the ALDinHE website (great choice available!). So, just as you encourage students to reach out and access services, do the same yourself.
Your mapping document may be very long and your critical friend(s) can help you to see which mapped actions are ‘the best ones’ to keep. Or maybe your mapping is very short and they jog your memory by asking you several times ‘Why didn’t you add when you ….?’. They may even give you a headache by getting you to explain why you have put an action down as an example of ‘sharing effective LD practice’ rather than ‘commitment to scholarly approach’. Hmmm, yes, now why did I choose it to go in that category?…
I personally found this really helpful for part 2 of the CeP application in which we outline our Learning Development philosophy. My philosophy? Er, I just do what I do and see results, but that doesn’t sound like a philosophy! I’d especially like to thank Laurence Morris for agreeing to meet with me after I contacted him via the ALDinHE CeP recipients page; talking through my practice with him enabled me to understand for example that my approach is action research focussed and that I value collaborative working.
A final note about discussing your application with a colleague – it could inspire them to apply for Cep/CeLP.
Tip 3: Reflection
No wonder thewords ‘critically reflective narrative’ and the ‘must’ of the instructions regarding Value 5 are bolded in the handbook. I was surprised to read through what I had thought would be my final draft, only to feel dismayed at the amount of description and lack of reflection I had offered. In fact, upon reading my application I had an uncanny sense of déjà vu partnered with a little voice on repeat saying ‘this is all descriptive, where is your reflection?’ This can be traced back to countless academic skills tutorials with students -but what a shock to find that I was not able to effortlessly practise what I preach. Upon reflection (no pun intended) having any difficulties with reflection ultimately shows how useful this award is, especially in today’s hamster wheel work environments where there is often no time to stop and reflect. So, as with Tip 1, give yourself more time than you may have originally planned for this.
I also found that the word count hindered me from being consistently reflective throughout my application. Luckily the DRIVE model suggested in the handbook (Describe, Reason, Impact, Verify and Evidence) enabled me to ensure the reflection was present, although what personally helped me more in terms of keeping it concise was Driscoll’s What cycle (What?, So what?, Now what?).
Tip 4: Time management
A CeP submission is 1,200-1,800 words which is short when compared to typical assignments we help HE students with, but don’t underestimate it. Your application will probably take longer than you expect it to, however this isn’t really surprising when we consider the depth of content. We are looking backwards and forwards, so it is incorporating a lot of thinking and a lot of strategic decision making in terms of what goes in and what is left out.
Approaching your application in a step-by-step fashion and including breaks away from it (the ‘fresh eyes’ strategy) is really important. In my own application, this definitely helped me to produce clearer, deeper reflection, for example.
Don’t fall into the trap of thinking this is all about you and you know yourself and your practice so well you can churn it out in a week or so. You can’t and you shouldn’t. Take your time and savour the experience – you will learn a lot and you’ll enjoy the journey.
Ultimately, applying for CeP is something that you may find to be a challenge and time consuming. This can often be how our students feel about their assignments so let’s embrace those feelings fully, walk the talk and put all our advice and recommendations to the test. Download the CeP/CeLP handbook today, book onto the next writing retreat, get mapping those values! It can only make us stronger, both individually and as an LD community.
References
Joubert, M. (2024). ‘The liminal space: academic literacies practitioners’ construction of professional identity in the betwixt and between’, London Review of Education. 22(1) Available at: https://doi.org/10.14324/LRE.22.1.15
Mårtensson, K. and Roxå, T. (2021). ‘Academic developers developing: aspects of an expanding lifeworld’, International Journal for Academic Development, 26(4), pp. 405–417. Available at: https://doi.org/10.1080/1360144X.2021.1950725
Tibbetts, Neil Adam, and Timothy Chapman. (2023). A Guide to in-Sessional English for Academic Purposes : Paradigms and Practices. Oxford: Routledge, 2023.