Please note that the following survey carried out in 2002/03 is based on comments by a variety of people - I have removed names of individuals. It is not meant to be comprehensive, merely a subjective snapshot of some of the more common on-line PDP systems at present available.
Bruce Woodcock
Careers and Employability Service,
University of Kent at Canterbury, Canterbury, Kent CT2 7ND
Tel: 01227 764000 ext. 7594, Fax: 01227 823165
UKC Careers home page: www.kent.ac.uk/careers/
The QA code of practice requires that Personal Development Plans are embedded in courses at all Universities by 2005.
Some general comments:
Keep PDPs simple and make them easy, not too time consuming.
Our interpretation of the QA code of practice is that a PDP system should be available to all students not necessarily embedded into courses.
Several people expressed the need for an initiative to prevent all the reinvention of the wheel going on at present.
Effective practice is emerging bottom up, in a variety of forms which suit academic disciplines and therefore maximise staff and student 'buy-in and ownership
These are divided into subsets e.g. Oral Communication is broken down into:
Listening
Communicating
Discussing
Explaining
Informal Presentations
Negotiating
Formal Presentations
There are also 6 qualities:
Attitude to change
Attitude to people
Emotional Resilience
Responsibility
Mental Approach
Self Motivation
These are similarly divided into subsets
You first assess how competent you are on each of these skills/qualities on a scale:
? not yet assessed
0 not like me
1 slightly like me
2 moderately like me
3 very much like me
* I have made plans to develop this
tick completed and have provided evidence
You can give a date by which you want to be competent in this skills
From here you can reflect and assess:
Mention any problems you have with this skill and how these might have affected you and maybe others around you. Identify why acquiring this skill is important to you and what aspects of it you need to work on
And Plan and Take Action
Say what you are going to do that will help you learn how to use this skill more competently. Say which courses, workshops, activities and employment you are are or would like to undertake. Also, say what you are going to do that will help you practice the skill and hence develop it further.
Finally a Development Journal is available which summarises all your answers so far.
Support Links are also available which list University Workshops and other resources
It is now available on the web at www.leeds.ac.uk/textiles/keynote/Keynote_PDP/index.htm. There will be a Guide to Customisation available on the Keynote site in September so that staff wishing to use the material can download the Site Files and customise them to suit their course/ institution, free of charge.
The draft version on CD seems very clear and easy to use. It uses a "medium-tech" approach encompassing a web site with links to very well produced MS Word Documents that the students can fill in and save. These cover key strengths, skills audit, approaches to learning, career goals quiz, career plan, learning log, key skills for employment and reference summary.
Sections are:
Key Skills - introduction and audit. Covers:
Communication
Numeracy
Use of IT
Learning how to learn
Working with others.
Background - recording current skills and areas for improvement
Learning Style Quiz
Goals - setting career, academic and personal goals
Planning - action planning, plus financial planning tool
Opportunities - voluntary work etc.
Progress - reassessing how you are progressing towards your goals.
CV - producing a CV
Reference - only part which is held by student's tutor
Docs - editable word documents for the student to complete
