The great continuous professional development bake off

Recently the UCL Deafness, Cognition and Language team (DCAL) launched their new CPD courses and celebrated the 12th anniversary of British Sign Language (BSL) being recognised as an official language in the UK.

They held a very competitive Bake Off and invited entries from within UCL and the general public, the theme being BSL and all funds raised were donated to the Frank Barnes School for Deaf Children.

The standard of entries were extremely high with imaginative interpretations of the theme of BSL.

Professor Andrew Eder, Pro-Vice-Provost for Life Learning and a judge at the event commented: "It has been fantastic to have the opportunity to support DCAL with the launch of their new CPD courses and we, in the Life Learning team, are very excited to be working with them to broaden their portfolio and reach. The judging was very challenging as the creativity and enthusiasm of the contestants was very impressive".

Robert Adam, Director of Continuing Professional Development at DCAL added that: "It is a very exciting time at DCAL with the launch of our CPD courses. We look forward to reaching out to a broad audience, and sharing widely our research knowledge with different professions working with Deaf people."

This event was the culmination of much hard work by Robert Adam, Dr Manjula Patrick (DCAL Administrator), Katie Mason (DCAL PhD student) and Mischa Cooke (DCAL Deaf Community Liaison Officer).

Winners

Star Baker and biscuit category: Lizzie Worster, UCL MSc student

Celebration cakes: Heather Payne, DCAL PhD student

Cupcakes/muffins: Hannah Phillips-Haynes, DCAL Centre secretary

Offering more professional development

The DCAL team were excited to announce the launch of new CPD courses at the event which include:

• BSL linguistics for BSL Tutors: a one day course aimed at giving BSL teachers background training on the linguistics of BSL running on 25^th March and 18^th April.

• Two Deafhood workshops running in May, run by Dr Paddy Ladd, internationally renowned pioneer in the field of Deaf studies. Please email dcalcourses@ucl.ac.uk for further information.

The Life Learning team are working with DCAL to produce further courses, some online, to be launched later this year.

To visit the DCAL website: http://www.ucl.ac.uk/dcal/

To view the UCL Life Learning course finder: www.ucl.ac.uk/lifelearning

If you want to meet the Life Learning team and see how they can assist you with your short course development, join our workshop at the Teaching & Learning conference on 13 April.

Jenni Bozec, Marketing and Communications Coordinator, UCL Life Learning