Path is ready for more testers, as long as you don't mind things breaking
Since July, Path has gained a CPD profile export for the Health and Care Professions Council (HCPC), the Chartered Society of Physiotherapy (CSP) Career Framework, more kinds of evidence, and better ways to recover and export your work. It’s still alpha software with no automated backups, and I’m looking for people who’ll use it, find what’s broken, and tell me.
Path has been in an invite-only alpha since I introduced it in July, and continues to be accessible through the waiting list. Most of the visible work since then has gone into the CPD people have to submit, like an HCPC CPD profile, and into protecting your work while the app is still changing a lot.
What’s changed since July
An HCPC CPD profile. If you’re registered with the HCPC, you can export a path as an HCPC CPD profile. I’ve written about how that works on the Path blog.
The CSP Career Framework. Physiotherapists can map their work against the CSP’s Career Framework, which is now open to everyone using Path.
An achievement record. This lists everything you’ve marked complete, across every path, in the order it happened, and you can download it as a Word document. Unlike a portfolio export, where you choose what goes in, the record includes everything.
More kinds of evidence. Evidence used to be a file you uploaded. It can now be a link, so a paper or a resource on the web counts without you having to download it and upload it again. You can also attach evidence while you’re still writing a claim, CPD entry, or reflection, instead of saving it first.
Reusing evidence across frameworks. One piece of evidence can back claims on more than one path, and it now shows which frameworks it supports. A teaching observation can count towards a fellowship application and a promotion case at the same time, without being added twice.
Safety nets. Deleted items go to Trash, where they stay until you restore them or delete them for good. Claims, reflections, and CPD entries keep a version history, so you can go back to an earlier version, and CPD entries, reflections, and evidence can be marked as draft or complete.
A complete export. The Export your data button on your Account page exports your whole portfolio, files included. It now covers everything you can put into Path, and it works for large portfolios too.
Alongside all of this, a lot of work has gone into security, data protection, and accessibility.
Testing means things will break
I’m looking for people who are happy to treat Path as a testing ground. There’ll be bugs, some features won’t work the way you’d expect, and some will change from one week to the next. When something goes wrong, or doesn’t make sense, I’d like to hear about it through Send feedback in the app (you can only access this form from within the app).
Feedback that changes Path earns a year of the paid tier
Everything in Path stays free while it’s being tested, but I’ve started planning for what a paid tier of the app offers. This post describing the tiers has more detail and includes the offer for testers: if your feedback leads to a change in Path, you’ll get Career, the paid tier, free for a year after it launches and a lifetime discount after that.
If that sounds like something you’d use, join the waiting list, and if you’d like to look around first, there’s a demo that doesn’t need an account. The project page has more on what Path is for.