New 'affordable' online CPD courses launched
Tuesday, July 29, 2014
Professional e-learning courses in areas such as safeguarding, play and management were launched yesterday by BNG Training.
The new online CPD programme, with hour-long courses from around £20, is being rolled out over the summer by the training arm of Bertram Nursery Group.
Course content has been designed by early years tutors and assessors along with BNG Training staff, and piloted by Bertram group practitioners of varying levels of experience, as well as independent nurseries over the past month.
Susan McGhee, Director, BNG Early Years Training said, ‘Nurseries were getting in touch saying we want to go on courses but we are struggling to find time to do them; and we know it is a such a cost for nurseries to send staff out for the day.
‘Online learning will never take place of people going to courses but this is a route that people can access complementary training.’
Courses include Child Protection Training, which went live yesterday, and Safeguarding, What is Play?, Promoting Positive Behaviour, Leadership and Management, Equality and Diversity plus Social Media for Early Years Settings, which all go live during the month of August.
Ms McGhee said the leadership and management CPD course is designed to introduce some of the concepts involved in management and encourage reflective practice.
She added some fact-heavy subjects such as infection control also lend themselves to online learning.
‘We had teams of [BNG Training] people travelling around the country doing infection control courses in the evenings, but these online courses mean people are just able to log on and do them in their own time.’
The multi-media course incorporates video, audio, text and pictures, with a quiz at the end of each module to test knowledge and understanding of the subject.
The course is accredited by the CPD service and designed to be ‘better quality than the clunky PowerPoint style e-learning courses which sometimes let you skip through and do the assessment without following the content,’ Ms McGhee added.
The programme is part of a bigger nursery management software project to be launched early next year.
