Back in late September I hatched a plan to revalidate my MCLIP.  I gave myself a month or so to do this (in my head not in public) and I am happy to say I submitted over lunch today.

So how was it?

I found it a fairly straightforward process in the end.  I had a running start at it since I was already registered on the CILIP website and had worked out that you had to login there to get into the CILIP VLE.  I watched the various videos on how to use the VLE and the Portfolio tool and these were fine.  I also had the benefit of the handy presentation (login to the VLE before you follow the link) @ellyob has shared from her revalidation workshop.  Also very helpful were the tips blogged by @joeyanne. Armed with this background (about an hour or so) I set out to complete the exercise.

I decided to make my future planning simple and revalidate my CPD for 2013 (with 2014 to follow subject to how I got on).  I had a big change of role in mid 2013 and wanted to look back to this.

I soon discovered the change of role had disrupted my usual CPD recording (a big Word document) which meant I only had about two thirds of the year.  Fortunately at the same time I stopped adding things to the Word Document I started using I Done This to track my daily activity.  Basically it emails me at the end of each day, I email back what I have been up to and it then shoves it all in a calendar for me.  Using this I soon picked out 30 plus hours of CPD that I wanted to reflect on and wrote brief statements about what I had been up to for the CPD log.  It took me a little more than a couple of hours interspersed with distractions.

I then wrote the accompanying 250 word statement.  Under three headings (Personal Performance, Organisational Context and Wider Professional Context) I put a couple of aspects each of work tasks and CPD opportunities from 2013.  It was good to look back on these (all be it very briefly).  I probably spent an hour or so mulling it but most of that was spent on one section that I didn’t much like. With a quick bit of advice from @ellyob I got it sorted.

The final submission was straightforward via the VLE and job done!  Hopefully I should hear back in time for me to submit for 2014.  Have some M J Hibbett & the Validators to celebrate!