PEGGasus Users Like Online PD Marketplace

But APEGGA Surveying Suggests Less Than Half of Members Know It Exists

BY DEREK McCUNE, MBA
PEGGasus Market
Development Manager

PEGGasus is an online marketplace that APEGGA members and others can use to find and enrol in professional development opportunities of all types. We’ve set a goal for ourselves to be “the resource of choice for the engineering and geoscience professions on matters of continuing professional development.”

Three recent surveys – of members at large, members who have visited the site and members who have registered in events through PEGGasus – confirm the validity of the concept and the functional design. Members who have visited the site provided many constructive comments.

Of those who have visited the site, 65 per cent said they will return and 25 per cent said they hadn’t made up their minds. Given the early stages of operation and the growing number of providers, we are confident that the committed percentage will increase.

Common threads from these surveys that are helping us build a better learning marketplace are:

• Give us more events and more event providers. Thirty-three providers at launch had grown to 70 by the end of April – more than doubling in four months. The number of events has remained about constant with new events and opportunities balancing expired items.
  
  But we are in discussions with another half-dozen course and event providers that could double the number of listings. Should that happen, we will have the largest database of professional development opportunities and events available for the engineering and geoscience community that we are aware of. And that’s pretty impressive. Just as we go to press, Serebra Learning Corporation joined PEGGasus as a provider. They offer over 1,800 on-line courses in the professional development, Internet and IT fields.
  
  •The search agent is a great idea. This is one of the gems of the system that people are only just now discovering. It enables notification to the users of new opportunities on the system meeting customized user criteria – without them having to revisit the website.
  
  •Clean out stale-dated items. The module to automatically delete these items has been developed and requires testing. Once it’s acceptable to us, we’ll stop those items from showing up in your searches.
  
  •Add more geoscience items. During March and April the majority of the new events entered into the database were directed towards geoscientists and the petroleum industry.
  
  •Cut the advertisements. We’d like to, but we can’t because they defray some of our costs. If registration volumes build, it may become a viable option.
  
  •The search engine works great. Thanks, but we’re still looking for ways to make it even better and more operationally intuitive. We’re going to make technical society events more available and we’re considering adding “canned” search results to reduce your time in inputting search criteria.
  
  •Allow searches without creating a profile. This can be done now. We’re also working on changes to request personal information only when you want to register in an event or course.

Despite all this good news, only 43 per cent of APEGGA’s members are currently aware of PEGGasus. This points to the ongoing challenge of effectively communicating with members. We’ve used The PEGG and mass e-mails extensively. Although 93 per cent of members read The PEGG, the many articles and ads about PEGGasus appear to have caught the attention of less than half of our members.

E-mails are very effective but about 50 per cent of our members haven’t, or don’t know whether they have, provided APEGGA with a current e-mail address.

Here are three things you can do to help us help you in meeting your professional development needs:

1) explore PEGGasus at www.peggasus.ca and start to benefit from the host of PD opportunities that are available.

2) drop a line to email@apega.ca advising us of your e-mail address. Your address will enable APEGGA to communicate with you more efficiently and effectively. And our privacy policy forbids us from giving that address to anyone else.

3) drop a line to peggasus@apega.ca and let us know of other PD providers or events you would like to see listed in PEGGasus.