Objective: determine the extent of the CPD/short course/ExecEd offering in the UCL Faculty of Engineering, and determine any best practice or issues arising relevant to short course delivery.
This work was carried out on behalf of the UCL Faculty of Engineering, as the faculty is interested in developing its short course/CPD offerings in the near future. In order to assess the current offering across the faculty, interviews were conducted with representatives from each of the 10 departments which comprise the faculty - specifically seeking information on 4 main themes:
In my role as an investigator in this project, my tasks included: constructing a project plan, determining a set of questions to ask interviewees, scheduling and conducting interviews with representatives from each department, collating responses and producing a final report with findings and recommendations. Conducting a set of suitable questions was a particular challenge in this project, as the faculty covers a wide range of subjects, and crucially a very wide range of academic practice. This results in a set of departments with vastly different approaches to conducting non-degree teaching, and thus, the questions were designed to cover as large a scope as possible.
Alongside this, an additional challenge for myself was that I had never produced a fully qualitative report, as the majority of my work is heavily skewed towards quantifying phenomena. This project was good experience for me in building that skill, and skills in a consultancy role more generally. The findings of this report allowed for the creation of a set of 8 recommendations - which will hopefully be used to steer the development of short courses in the faculty.