04/01/2023

Introducing NCDA’s New Learning Platform: The Hub

By Melissa Venable

NCDA is excited to announce a new way to experience professional development. The Hub is an online, on-demand platform featuring a variety of opportunities to earn continuing education credit.

Why Did NCDA Create a New Platform?

NCDA’s Code of Ethics addresses the expectation for career development professionals to pursue continuing education efforts: "Career professionals recognize the need for continuing education to acquire and maintain a reasonable level of awareness of current scientific and professional information in their fields of activity" (NCDA, 2015, C.2.f.). Online, self-paced courses have not only become more popular in recent years as a source of continuing education (Wood, 2022), there is also evidence that they are effective ways to learn and train in a variety of settings (Dimeff et al., 2015; Means et al., 2009).

The Hub was developed in part as a response to an NCDA member survey about professional development conducted in 2021. Members were asked to share not only the topics they wanted to learn more about, but also their preferences for different learning formats. In that survey, 75% of participants identified “online training modules (on-demand, self-paced)” as a preferred method for gaining professional development.

NCDA Past President Dr. Sharon Givens shared that

launching the professional development hub is a monumental milestone in the history of the National Career Development Association. This new initiative will enable NCDA to expand its brand to include the home of the most current and relevant professional development courses for career professionals. I encourage all to enroll, learn, and grow! (S. Givens, personal communication, March 20, 2023)

Dr. Givens recently described the intent of The Hub’s content is to ultimately

provide career development professionals with a wealth of information to elevate their service delivery process, refresh fundamental career development competencies, and enable career professionals to build skills in real time to accelerate their knowledge base to share with clients and students.” (S. Givens, personal communication, March 20, 2023)

What You Can Expect

All current courses on The Hub can be completed online via computer, laptop, smartphone, or other mobile device.

The Courses: Course content includes a variety of ways to engage in the topic and materials. You will find self-assessments, podcast episodes, videos, articles, case studies, and more. Most courses also include a brief quiz to assess your learning. Five learning opportunities are available now, including three micro-courses devoted to diversity, equity, and inclusion topics; one course based on NCDA’s podcast; and one that offers credit for reading NCDA’s membership magazine, Career Developments.

The Topics: Courses on The Hub are created by experts in the field. NCDA’s professional development team works with the Executive Director, Board of Directors, and Committees to determine course topics. Subject matter experts, who serve as course authors, are contracted to create course content in their areas of expertise.

Quality Reviews: Each course undergoes a review from additional subject matter experts. These course reviewers provide outside feedback and ensure the quality of the courses before they are released.

Costs: Courses currently available on The Hub range from $49 to $119. Prices vary, primarily based on the number of continuing education credits available. All courses on The Hub are available to both NCDA members and non-members. Members can take advantage of discounted rates.

Continuing Education Credits: Courses lead to continuing education (CE) credits, which meet many certification and licensure requirements, including NCDA’s professional credentials. You can print a certificate of completion, which includes earned CEs, at the end of each course.

How to Get Started

The new learning platform is integrated with NCDA’s website. To get started, click on the green “NCDA Hub” button at the top of any NCDA webpage. This takes you to an introductory page where you have three options.

1. If you are brand new to The Hub, click on the Overview button. The Overview Page includes FAQs and additional information about how the hub courses are created, continuing education credits, pricing, and more.

2. When you are ready to enroll in a course, click on the Learning Hub Courses button. The Learning Hub Courses page provides a list of current courses. Browse the course descriptions, learning objectives, CEs, and pricing, then click on the title of a course to begin the registration process. You will be prompted to enter your NCDA login and password. If you are not a member, you can sign up for a free NCDA login on this page.

Once your registration is complete and paid for, you are immediately enrolled and will enter your Hub Dashboard. There you can begin working through course materials at your own pace.

3. After you’ve enrolled in a course, you can return to The Hub directly by clicking on the Hub Dashboard button. To register for additional courses, return to the Learning Hub Courses page.

You can also watch a brief video that illustrates how to get started.

Watch for announcements from NCDA as additional professional development opportunities are added to a growing catalog of topics and learning formats. For questions about The Hub, contact Melissa Venable at mvenable@ncda.org .

References

Dimeff, L. A., Harned, M. S., Woodcock, E. A., Skutch, J. M., Koerner, K., & Linehan, M. M. (2015). Investigating band for your training buck: A randomized controlled trial comparing three methods of training clinicians in two core strategies of dialectical behavior therapy. Behavior Therapy, 46(3). https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S0005789415000167

Means, B., Toyama, Y., Murphy, R., Bakia, M., & Jones, K. (2009). Evaluation of evidence-based practices in online learning: A meta-analysis and review of online learning studies. U.S. Department of Education. Office of Planning, Evaluation and Policy Development. Policy and Program Studies Service. https://www2.ed.gov/rschstat/eval/tech/evidence-based-practices/finalreport.pdf

National Career Development Association. (2015). NCDA Code of Ethics. https://ncda.org/aws/NCDA/asset_manager/get_file/3395?ver=738703

Wood, J. (2022, January 27). These 3 charts show the global growth in online learning. World Economic Forum. https://www.weforum.org/agenda/2022/01/online-learning-courses-reskill-skills-gap/

Melissa A. Venable, PhD, coordinates NCDA’s learning opportunities through The Hub, Career Practitioner Conversations podcast, and webinar series as the Director of Professional Development. She has more than 15 years of experience in online education as an instructional designer, curriculum manager, and online instructor. Her professional background includes work in higher education career services and military outplacement counseling. Melissa can be reached at mvenable@ncda.org and via LinkedIn: https://www.linkedin.com/in/melissavenable/