Continuing Education Provider Professional Development Resources Begins Annual Spring Cleaning Event

JACKSONVILLE, FL, April 10, 2013 (Press-News.org) Professional Development Resources is a national provider of continuing education (CE) home study courses for psychologists, social workers, counselors, marriage and family therapists, speech-language pathologists, occupational therapists, and registered dietitians. With over 180 self-study continuing education (CE) courses, the company has to work hard to keep its curriculum fresh and new by continuously adding new courses and retiring old ones.

Professional Development Resources, a Florida not-for-profit educational corporation, has been in the business of offering accredited continuing education units to health and mental health professionals for 21 years. Starting out with live national seminars in 1992, the company has grown through various stages and now is exclusively specialized in self-study courses, many of which can be completed online. At last count, the company had more than 180 accredited courses, although the number changes nearly every day with the addition of new courses and discontinuation of older ones.

"Our main goal is to present a wide variety of topics that are of current clinical interest to the professionals we serve," says Leo Christie, president and CEO of Professional Development Resources. "We do this in three ways. The first is to ask our users what topics they need in order to maintain their clinical competencies and learn new skills. Every time a user completes one course, we ask for suggestions on other topics they would like to see.

"The second way we stay current is to add new topics as they become available. We maintain a wish list and are always on the lookout for quality content in the desired topic areas. We know we can't have everything for everyone, but we try to come as close as possible. The third way is to retire older courses to make room for newer topics. This way, we are able to give visitors to our website a new look and more choices each time they come back. That is what our current Spring Cleaning Event is about."

There are a number of challenges that have to be addressed in the effort to maintain a curriculum that is extensive enough to meet a wide variety of clinical interests. If there are not enough choices, many potential users will leave without finding anything they want. On the other hand, if there are too many offerings, users may still leave without finding anything because there are simply too many items to be readily searchable.

Consequently, the company website has to be able to make it easy for visitors to find what they are looking for with only a few keystrokes. Professional Development Resources has developed site search technology that enables users to view courses by topic, key word, author, amount of CE credit, price, or publication date. Courses are arranged by profession so that a psychologist, for example, can view only courses accredited for that profession. There are dedicated pages for viewing only courses that are new or only courses that are on sale.

During the spring months, Professional Development Resources is featuring its Spring Cleaning Event. This is an opportunity for customers to purchase - at a very deep discount - courses that are to be discontinued soon. "I am always a bit ambivalent about discontinuing courses," says Christie. These are courses that still have very valuable content, but some of them need to be replaced with newer research. Part of the goal of this event is to give our users one last chance to take these courses before they are moved to the archives."

About Professional Development Resources, Inc.

Professional Development Resources is a Florida nonprofit educational corporation founded in 1992 by licensed marriage and family therapist Leo Christie, PhD. The company, which is accredited by the American Psychological Association (APA), the Association of Social Work Boards (ASWB), the National Board for Certified Counselors (NBCC), the American Speech-Language-Hearing Association (ASHA), the American Occupational Therapy Association (AOTA), and the Academy of Nutrition and Dietetics - as well as many other national and state boards - has focused its efforts on making accredited continuing education units more cost-effective and widely accessible to health professionals by offering online home study coursework. Its current expanded curriculum includes a wide variety of clinical topics intended to equip health professionals to offer state-of-the art services to their clients.

Contact:
Leo Christie, PhD, CEO
Professional Development Resources, Inc.
904-645-3456
http://www.pdresources.org/