Keith Waitt, Senior Head of Professional Learning, shares the latest developments in Professional Learning, including what’s changed, what you can expect, and how societies can be involved, as he finishes his first year in his role.
Q: If you had to pick three words to describe your journey with the Professional Learning (PL) initiative what would they be and why?
A: It’s been one year since I arrived at CFA Institute and began leading this initiative. My three words would be fast, furious, and fun. “Fast” because a lot has happened with PL in the last 12 months. When I arrived at CFA Institute it was a product (CPD Products) that then became a program and now we are seeing Professional Learning through the lens of a business model and leading strategy for CFA Institute.
Second is “furious,” because with speed of development comes an element of freneticism. Our great team of learning professionals are building PL with commitment, determination, and creativity. We are encouraging them to think outside the box, take risks, but ultimately to think about their audience — What does the learner want from us? Do we have it? How best can we get it to them?
And finally, “fun.” Clearly, I’m not doing this for the good of my health, but because I really enjoy what we are building. I’m passionate about learning and development. I want that enjoyment and passion to influence everyone who gets involved.
Q: Why is now the time to ramp up our Professional Learning (PL) offering and why change the name?
A: As the investment management industry evolves and digital technology advances, learners seek relevant digital content and experiences that support their career goals. CFA Institute has realized that we have a strategic opportunity and are well positioned to wholly reimagine our approach to learning and be a market-leading provider of professional learning to the industry.
Our members have told us they want learning content to be easy to access, in one place, relevant to their job and career, but above all they want it personalized. Our success depends upon our taking a leap of faith into the highly digital world. We are therefore reimagining our approach to learning and planning to create something new: a fresh, digital learning experience that reflects the needs, preferences, and behaviors of learners today in terms of both content and delivery. We use the term “learners” because our ultimate vision is to become a leading resource for learning and career support among all investment professionals globally.
Through Professional Learning, we will equip learners with the most relevant and highest level of knowledge they need to achieve their career goals. As you can see, we are looking beyond the check-the-box CPD (Continuing Professional Development) of yesterday, and that is why we felt it was important to change the name of the initiative. I think Professional Learning best describes our "raison d’etre".
Q: Now that you have been leading the initiative for one year, what has been accomplished?
A: Here are some highlights. In January 2020, we finalized our role-based Competency Framework model, which specifies the skills needed to be a successful investment professional. This Framework provides the foundation for the content that we will source and curate. It is derived from the CFA® Program practice analysis work and curriculum, but which, in addition to financial and ethics skills, also adds soft skills that our members feel are needed to do well in their jobs.
We reimagined how we deliver learning, putting personalization at the core, and started looking for a suitable Learning Experience Platform (LXP) to provide a personalized landing page or access point for our learners. We have established a strong relationship with our IT colleagues over the past few months. As a joint task force we have researched, tested, and recommended potential approaches for our demanding requirements, including the use of data analysis and artificial intelligence to deliver the personalized experience. We have discovered that there is no one vendor who can deliver everything we want, but we believe we are closing in on a solution.
Professional learning and career management go hand in glove. For us, providing resources to help our stakeholders achieve career success is a key priority, and that is why we just launched new Career Tools offerings, accessed through the Career Resources page as well as new Professional Learning pages. In Career Tools, you’ll find a broader range of career assessments; a resume/CV builder and feedback tool; a job interview simulator; and a deep library of learning assets geared to support “soft skills” development. This is just one phase of our ongoing efforts to improve our Professional Learning offerings.
Finally, the Professional Learning team provides our excellent CFA Institute conferences and speaker series globally. It is vital that we integrate our digital learning experience with our existing learning opportunities, such as in-person and virtual events and conferences, in order to provide our learners with a holistic and seamless experience.
Q: What can we expect over the next year?
A: As you can imagine, there are many moving pieces of the Professional Learning puzzle that still remain. There will not be a big reveal of our platform and neither will the platform have everything on it from day one. We are taking a phased approach to development, and product releases and enhancement will take place over many months.
Moreover, CFA Institute is now immersed in reviewing the organizational strategy under Marg Franklin’s leadership, and we already know that Professional Learning will be an integral part of the organization’s strategy. We are waiting for more details on this and expect by this summer to have a clear path forward.
The world is changing with the pandemic, the economic repercussions, and the evolution of our industry. Part of our challenge is now financial and operational. Our learning experience requires investment in resources — people and technology. We have to make smart decisions and that requires us to prioritize what we want to do. Our rollout will happen over a longer time period.
Finally, there will be distractions along the way that will force us to pivot in a different direction; however, we are committed to continually improving and meeting the expectations of our learners. For example, when our in-person events were all cancelled due to COVID-19, my team immediately transitioned to virtual events. We now have a great virtual series for our learners including Conference Live, webinars, Home Front interviews, and Take 15 podcasts.
Q: What role are key stakeholders, such as societies and members, playing to ensure the end product meets their needs?
A: We continue to work closely with members, societies, and institutions to better understand their learning needs, behaviors, and preferences. We have used their insights to lay the groundwork for relevant content and the requirements of our digital learning platform. We already have two governing bodies in place with our Professional Learning Advisory Council and Professional Learning Steering Committee, which collectively bring together voices from societies, CFA Institute leadership, and learning professionals. We have also conducted in-depth survey research by interviewing members to ask them about their learning behaviors and needs. We also recently surveyed the leaders of our XL Societies to get a better understanding of how we can collaborate more closely with societies around the world to share and develop content. I see societies as our syndication network as well as individual learning laboratories — content incubators if you will — that can support our overall learning efforts.
FAQs
What is the mission and vision for the CFA Institute Professional Learning (PL) Initiative?
The PL initiative mission is to equip learners within the investment management profession with the highest level of knowledge and skills they need to achieve their career goals. Our vision is to become a leading resource for learning and career support among all investment professionals globally. We envision Professional Learning at CFA Institute becoming the gold standard for investment industry learning in the same way the CFA® Program is the gold standard for credentialing.
Professional Learning is an integral part of the CFA Institute strategy. Organizations, especially those that administer professional credentials, recognize the importance of life-long learning because industries evolve and change. Global regulators are increasing pressure on credentialing bodies to set standards to maintain professionalism.
How do you plan to achieve your vision?
To achieve our vision of success, we are focused on five priorities:
- keeping our learners at the center of everything we do,
- creating a holistic learning experience that integrates digital, in person live and virtual offerings,
- developing a content strategy informed by our thought leadership and role-based competency framework,
- delivering personalized experiences using data and Artificial Intelligence, and
- creating an easy-to-use digital learning platform.
What changes are being made this year?
We are keenly aware that learners prefer relevant, personalized, digital content and experiences. That is why we are reimagining our approach to learning and planning to create something new: a fresh, digital learning experience that reflects the needs, preferences, and behaviors of learners today. We use the term “learners” because our ultimate vision is to become a leading resource for learning and career support among all investment professionals globally.
So far in 2020 calendar year, we have updated and added to our learning content. This includes consolidating our CFA Institute content in one location, making it easier to access and find; introducing Career Tools, our personal and business skills curriculum; upgrading our PL Credits Tracker; and offering content in new media formats. A great example of how we are innovating is the recent pivot by our PL events team to deliver virtual learning experiences in the face of the pandemic. We are evaluating how these changes should influence the future of these events. We also relaunched Selections, our monthly PL newsletter, so learners can select topical preferences and content and events specific to their region.
We finalized our role-based Competency Framework model, which specifies the skills needed to be a successful investment professional (see later question).
What are you planning for the near-term future?
We want to provide our learners with a holistic and seamless experience, which requires investment in resources—people and technology. We must make smart decisions and prioritize what we want to do. We are taking a phased approach to development and product releases and expect enhancements will take place over many months. We don’t anticipate a big reveal of our learning platform, nor will the platform include everything on it from day one.
We continue to closely monitor learner feedback and trends in the investment management industry to identify high-quality content that helps our learners advance in their careers. This fall, we will launch a restructured, newly digital Refresher Readings that reflect the 2021 CFA Program curriculum updates.
What is the competency framework, and how is it influencing the Professional Learning team’s work?
In January 2020, we finalized our role-based Competency Framework model which specifies the skills needed to be a successful investment professional. This Framework provides the foundation for the content that we will source and curate. It is derived from the CFA Program practice analysis work and curriculum, but which, in addition to financial and ethics skills, also adds soft skills that our members feel are required to do well in their jobs.
How is Professional Learning making decisions and ensuring alignment with CFA Institute strategy?
The Professional Learning team is coordinating closely with multiple internal CFA Institute teams and receives overarching direction from the Professional Learning Steering Committee for program decisions and resourcing. We engage with Society leaders through our Professional Learning Advisory Council, which meets monthly to provide feedback and discuss important topics, such as content access and learning credit recognition policies.
What is the status of earlier efforts to pursue continuing education as a requirement for CFA® charterholders?
At this time, CFA Institute is not pursuing post-CFA charter continuing education as an annual requirement. However, we continue to recommend a minimum of 20 hours of professional learning each year. CIPM® certificants are required to earn 15 credit hours of professional learning each year. At some point in the future it may be appropriate to revisit required learning for post-CFA charters.
Why did you change the name from Continuing Professional Development (CPD) to Professional Learning (PL)?
The Professional Learning team is looking beyond the check-the-box world of Continuing Professional Development, and that is why we felt it was important to change the name. The term “Professional Learning” best describes our goal of providing members the knowledge and skills required to drive their careers. We are focused on providing a learning experience that is active, personalized, and relevant. We ask that societies change any CPD references to “Professional Learning (PL)” to ensure our learners receive a consistent experience.
How will this impact how CFA charterholders and CIPM certificants track their credits?
CFA charterholders will continue to track credits as they have in the past. They will now record Professional Learning (PL) credits, not Continuing Education (CE) credits. There is no difference between PL and CE credits, and all existing credits will remain as part of this name change.
For the CIPM Mandatory Continuing Education (MCE) Program, all guidelines and requirements regarding learning credits largely remain the same. CIPM Mandatory Continuing Education credits are now CIPM Mandatory Professional Learning credits.
How can I access Professional Learning offerings?
To learn more about Professional Learning, visit our Professional Learning pages where you can browse the collections, subscribe to our monthly newsletter Selections, download the Members App, use the PL Tracker, and more.
Providing career resources is a key priority, and that is why we recently launched our new Career Tools section, accessed from the Career Resources page. In Career Tools, you’ll find a broad range of career assessments; a resume/CV builder and feedback tool; and a job interview simulator. Included is a deep library of learning assets to support career mobility/management and soft skills development. This is just one phase of our ongoing efforts to improve our Professional Learning offerings.
Our webinars page lists our latest offerings in that format.
Email professionallearning@cfainstitute.org with any questions you may have.