Sunday 25 February 2007

Personal Development Planning

PDP is a concept that was development to aid a student's career progression by recording activities and seeing what needs to be improved. Theoretically you'd end up with a progress file that you could show to your potential employers alongside your CV and/or application form to boost your chances of getting a job. The following quote is the definition from the Higher Education Academy's website:

"...a structured and supported process undertaken by an individual to reflect upon their own learning, performance and/or achievement and to plan for their personal, educational and career development."

You'd think that this is a great idea - and it is. However, while the government said that universities had to do it, they never said how. That's where the problems started. As there was no single implementation, there is pockets of best practice all over the place - but not everywhere. The government's reason for that is that institutions operate in different ways and the same can be said at a departmental level. This means that one implementation might not suit everyone - which is fair enough.

If you compare different institutions instead of different departments, you still see differences. Some have core modules, some have student unions providing documentation, some do very little at all.

There needs to be something done to make PDP work for everyone though. Recently, I submitted a draft of a report to a university committee and it contained three volumes of information (three sets of research done by three different people). It's interesting that all of this came to the same or similar conclusions. Here are some of the points:
  • That a brand identity should be created for PDP across the University, ensuring it is easily recognisable to students.
  • There is a feeling amongst students that it has no relevance to their course.
  • Meetings between staff and students are sporadic and there is uncertainty about it.
  • Some departments see it as an 'entitlement' and not a 'requirement'. Basically this means that some departments feel that they can implement it, but not do anything to make sure a standard is maintained or that it's enforced.
  • Although there are different models to choose from, they are not always suitable for groups such as part-time students, who may have more relevant PDP/CPD schemes with their employers.
  • Some students felt it was a case too much 'institutional target setting'.
  • Some students feel it has been poorly promoted (some don't even know about it).
Let's consider promotion. This is absolutely vital. If done well, people will notice the system, understand how it's done, recognise PDP documents and also have an incentive to do it.

One recommendation in my report included mentioning at the beginning of each year, but not just repeating the same information every time - that would make people less receptive. Each year the delivery has to be tailored to whatever stage the student is at. For instance, this would mean putting more of a focus on employability and it's links to CPD (Continuous Professional Development - an example of it is here) in the student's final year.

Another recommendation was to create an institutional 'branding' for the system. This would mean things like documents being centrally created and while there might be slight differences in each department, the majority of the content would be the same.

If documentation was provided in a single location, then that would also be helpful. In my institution, not every department uses the same Virtual Learning Environment. However, all students have access to a web portal. If relevant documentation was provided there, all students would know where to access PDP documents.

For an example of excellent resources that are centrally located, you should got to the Bournemouth University website. There are explanations and sections of text done in a question and answer style. They also provided a number of downloads.

Another suggestion was to have a review of PDP each year and either include it in a relevant document or have it as a separate report. This would mean that you're able to monitor the system's effectiveness and whether everyone is doing what they should to make sure it works.

One other major point I made was that a good incentive would be to allocate a certain percentage of module credits to PDP activities. If the student didn't do what they should do, then they could seriously affect their degree classification.

I obtained further information after the completion of that report and it confirmed what I already knew - which gave even more weight to my argument. We could go on looking at the existing setup forever and a day, but if nothing is done you're always going to get the same results.

So, what do you think about PDP?

Technorati tags: PDP, Employment, CPD, Education

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