Case study 1 -Midlands Hub practice sharing activity: mapping provision to the RD.

Case study 1 - Midlands Hub practice sharing activity: mapping provision to the RDF

Since July 2010 staff supporting researchers in the Midlands have sought clarification on timescales and expectations regarding the implementation of the new Researcher Development Framework.

The Vitae Midlands HM responded to this need by disseminating the latest RDF news from the central Vitae team and leading two meetings to discuss progress. The first of these meetings took place at the Vitae Researcher Development Conference in September, when colleagues from Midland's institutions convened around the RDF poster displays and got a flavour for the depth of statements and Professional Development Planner on show.  At the end of this informal meeting the audience feedback was that a practice sharing workshop in October would be useful to share first steps in mapping each institution's provision.

In planning this workshop, the Hub Manager collaborated with Warwick University and Birmingham University to showcase how they had started to incorporate the RDF into their training needs analysis tools for students.  The Warwick PRD website was showcased to nine different institutions, who could clearly see an operational path to map the sub-domains to specific skills provision.  Comments included

"Thanks for organising yesterdays session, the morning workshop about the RDF was very useful for me!  Now I just have to find the time for all of those mapping exercises!"

Sharing such best practice helped to allay fears about the depth of content in the RDF and allowed spin off meetings to form between neighbouring institutions who are now talking about collaborating to cost effectively share training needs analysis software.