GQA Qualifications, the fenestration industry awarding body, is offering interactive on-line webinars as part of its plans to develop CPD activities for its network of approved centres.
The first webinars have been delivered, and feedback from attendees located throughout the UK is reported to have been ‘very positive’. GQA Qualifications says that, going forwards, all webinars will be made available for viewing post-delivery and that content will be suitable for a wide range of topics and will be specific to occupational sectors.
The first two webinar topics delivered by GQA covered how to make witness statements meaningful and assessing knowledge criteria. The next two will look at professional discussions and the use of technology, including candidate-provided video footage.
Commenting on the new initiative, GQA’s operations manager, Sean Hayes, said: “One of GQA’s strengths has always been our strong working relationships with our approved centre network, and the restrictions on movement and face-to-face meetings brought about by the Coronavirus meant we had to look at different ways to interact with the network. Our webinar course leaders, Martin and Simon, have really grasped the opportunity to provide advice, guidance and support to our centres, and the feedback so far has been great.
“This pandemic has proved there is great truth in the phrase ‘necessity is the mother of invention, however I am certain the use of webinars and the like are not something we will only use in the short term: they will continue way beyond the current restrictions and form a real part of the way we can interact with our centres.”
One of the webinar course leaders, Martin Sadler, technical office/external quality advisor, added: “I feel that providing webinars will be one of the most effective and efficient ways of delivering GQA CPD events in the future. It will allow us to bring centres from all over the country together to look at subjects that relate to all of our centres, and to deliver them in a way which makes them more accessible for all.”
The second course leader, Simon Smith, technical office/external quality advisor, said: “I think we’ve shown a great initiative with the webinars, which has enabled us to interact with our centres during this current pandemic. It’s made us push on with something that has been thought about for a while, and to see it take off so quickly with such demand too has been really encouraging. It’s something we will definitely build on. We’ve also been versatile and been able to adapt our presentations by listening to our centres via the feedback we’ve received.”
