New and exciting features have been added to the GoodCPDGuide to promote the highest quality courses on the site. This is to drive our mission in helping teachers and schools find the best quality external courses, advice and support. Some of these features include a scoring system which enables providers to earn up to 36 points for each listing.

Scoring system

Providers can now, automatically, earn points for their courses/services in order to appear on the front page of the GoodCPDGuide and the highest in user searches. The position of the course is determined by a number of factors.

List Rating

Each listing can earn up to 5 stars from user reviews. Each star earned is worth 4 points up to a maximum of 20 points. Star rating reviews allows users to describe and rate the impact the training, expert or resource has had on the learning of pupils in their classrooms. All listings on the GoodCPDGuide have a unique review link where providers can copy and paste this link to their attendees. Find out how by following the 3 easy steps outlined here.

Average provider reviews

An additional 10 points may also be earned for the overall average reviews for each specific provider. These are indicated by the small blue squares next each provider’s name, 2 points for each square.

Key fields

The scoring system also recognises when key areas are filled out by providers. These areas are ‘evidence and research underpinning the approach’, ‘how users/participants evaluate success’ and ‘follow-up activities and support’ used in post session. Up to 2 points can be earned for each of these areas.

Example

Provider X has 4 entries on the guide. Course A has an average user review of 5 stars and has information about ‘evidence and research underpinning the approach’.  The overall star rating for Provider X is therefore 4 stars.

The score for Course A is calculated as follows:

·         20 points due to having 5 stars for Course A, i.e. 5 stars multiplied by 4 points.

·         8 points due to having 4 stars average for the provider, i.e. 4 average stars multiplied by 2 points

·         2 points for having the ‘evidence and research underpinning the approach’ field filled in.

The total points score for Course A is 30.

Prioritise your listings

We would encourage providers to take the following steps to ensure their listings appear higher on the rankings and are easier to find:

1. Make sure you fill in the 3 key fields:

a. ‘evidence and research underpinning the approach’,

b. ‘how users/participants evaluate success’ and

c. ‘follow-up activities and support’.

2. Encourage attendees of your courses and users of your services to write reviews on the Guide using our logos, badges and easy to find review links.

3. Keep listings up to date and use the ‘sessions’ feature to record dates and venues so that users can search by location.

If you have any questions or require assistance, please feel free to get in contact.