CPD is an essential element of many learning programs. It is the practice of keeping tabs on your skills and how they have improved over the course of time.

As you've seen, Mahara is already great for CPD — you can write journals logging your progress and display them in pages. You can also plan your actions using plans.

Sometimes, however, when monitoring CPD, it's necessary to have the ability to log more specific information related to the activity undertaken, for example the location of a CPD activity and the time spent on it. Some courses, for example, require you to demonstrate a specific number of hours of CPD before you can complete them.

Fortunately, the CPD Mahara artefact allows you to do just that. Built in a similar way to plans, it allows users to log their own CPD activities, and group these into lists for easy management. You may, for example, have a group of CPD activities for each course undertaken or for each personal area of interest (for example, JavaScript programming, cooking, and climbing).

An example of a CPD activity list based around JavaScript development is shown in the following screenshot:

CPD isn't only useful for students, it should also be conducted by staff and employees. According to the developers, "One rationale for this plugin was that if lecturers/teachers found Mahara useful to record and reflect upon their own CPD, they would be more likely to use Mahara with their students".

So let's have a look at the CPD Mahara extension and see what you can do with it: