The Staff Development Centre of University of Kelaniya launched an online platform to support the Continuous Professional Development (CPD) of university academics.  This platform, titled ‘Bite-sized CPD’ was launched on the 01^st of April 2021 in a zoom-based session.

It was initiated with the intention of delivering CPD content to teachers of University of Kelaniya in smaller, bite-sized chunks in a structured and focused way.  The key aims of this platform are to deliver brief but engaging and meaningful CPD sessions to academic staff members and to encourage sharing of innovative and best teaching practices as well as CPD resources among faculties. Such online sessions will be held bi-monthly or once a month, and it is hoped that ‘Bite-sized CPD’ would contribute to develop a culture of continuous professional development among the academics of the university.

The inaugural CPD session of this platform titled ‘Resources for Self-directed CPD: An Introduction to Magna Commons’ was conducted by Senior Lecturer Dr. Thilini Rupasinghe, Senior Lecturer Dr. Chamli Pushpakumara and Senior Lecturer Dr. Laalitha Liyanage from the Department of Applied Computing, Faculty of Computing and Technology.  This session highlighted the importance of CPD and introduced Magna Commons, a subscription-based, on-demand, online, and campus-wide digital library for teachers in Higher Education Institutes.  An overview of the useful resources on Magna Commons for interactive online teaching, assessment and academic leadership was provided by the facilitators.