by Alan Nelson
A long term frustration of mine is my inability to describe succinctly the work we do with professional associations. I start off well. I explain that there are three things professional bodies are normally trying to achieve: they want to offer courses online to help members complete their CPD; they want to create online study materials for students to study remotely for their qualifications; and … and … that is where is starts to go wrong!
Many of our projects do not fall into either of the first two categories. It makes life interesting that this third, miscellaneous group is so varied but it spoils my elevator pitch!
The thing is that lots of professional bodies are seeking to fulfil an objective that they see as central to their reason for existing, but which is quite peculiar to them. For the IRRV that objective is the provision of up to date professional learning and reference materials for revenues and benefits officers in local authorities. For EphMRA, it is the provision of an induction course for new pharmaceutical market researchers.
This last month we have launched just such a project. Resolution is an organisation of 5000 family lawyers who believe in a constructive non-confrontational approach to family law matters. Quoting from their website:
"The cornerstone of membership of Resolution is adherence to the Code of Practice, which sets out the principles of a non-confrontational approach to family law matters. The principles of the code are widely recognised and have been adopted by the Law Society as recommended good practice for all family lawyers. The code requires lawyers to deal with each other in a civilised way and to encourage their clients to put their differences aside and reach fair agreements."
To support all this they require all new members to attend a half day course explaining the Code of Practice. With 70 new members a month, running the courses is quite a logistical challenge and there are inevitably some members who don’t find a course being run at the appropriate time in the right part of the country.
To add to this, Resolution is something of a victim of its own success. In the early days, no one would have joined unless they embraced the principles embodied in the Code. As they have grown, however, they have become the standard body for family lawyers to belong to, and so it is no longer a given that every new member buys into the philosophy.
So to avoid the possibility of any less enthusiastic new members using the logistics of attending a course as an excuse for not attending, they decided to create an online version that a new member anywhere could sign up for at anytime. And it’s that new course that we recently launched.
So that is the third category of online learning project. It hasn’t helped me with my elevator pitch – still way too long – but it is a great example of why you can’t put all our work into neat boxes.
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