The CIOB Academy is evolving its efforts to support professional development and career progression.
Since our formation in 2016, the CIOB Academy’s approach has been to create inclusive educational pathways for individuals across the built environment, supporting them to fulfil their potential.
Recognising that people learn in different ways, if we want the sector to be more inclusive and truly represent the communities it serves, it’s only right we make our courses, training and CPD as accessible as we can.
At the CIOB Academy, we understand learners’ situations are always nuanced and require thoughtful consideration.
For example, while finalising grades on our recent Diploma in Building Safety course, one individual was identified by our anti-plagiarism tools for using writing-assistance software without flagging it beforehand.
The use of these tools without prior agreement is taken as a serious policy offence.
Some educational institutions may have chosen to reduce the marks available in the assessment and move on.
Instead, we chose to have a discussion with the learner, during which they disclosed their dyslexia and that they weren’t ready to share this with their employer, so they hadn’t declared it when registering for the training.
Considering the obvious effort they put into their work, we consulted the assessor and decided this learner fell within our ‘reasonable adjustments and special considerations’ policy.
As such, we were able to give their work the grade it deserved.
Our ‘reasonable adjustments and special considerations’ policy allows neurodivergent learners to make the most of our courses and professional development resources.
Accommodations are made to an individual’s curriculum or deadlines to meet the needs of their specific situation.
Specifically, the policy states: “There are two ways in which access to fair assessment can be maintained, these are through: reasonable adjustments – agreed before the assessment takes place, and special considerations – applied post-assessment.”
Evolving our offerings
We have encountered many people needing extra support with their learning. As a result, we’ve made several changes over the last year looking at the Academy’s distance-learning offerings and trying to make things as accessible as possible for all types of learners.
Content rewritten and resized: All distance learning courses now use larger font, have more readable sentence structure, and are easier to understand. These changes make course content more accessible to individuals studying English as a second language or those who, for any reason, have trouble reading.
Learn via audio: Those who have difficulty seeing, or simply prefer learning via audio, now have the option to click a button and hear course content read out to them by an AI voice.
New interactive activities: Static presentations are a thing of the past; we’ve updated all the activities within our course content to make them more engaging and informative.
The same improvements are also being introduced across our face-to-face courses, with most already updated and further refinements on the horizon.
Given the ongoing skills shortage across the industry, the CIOB Academy is committed to breaking down barriers and opening doors for more people to join the sector.
As construction continues to evolve, so do our efforts to support and empower professionals through new initiatives, training and collaboration – ensuring a highly trained and competent workforce across the built environment.
Find out more about CIOB Academy and its offerings here.
Adrian Montague is director of the CIOB Academy.
