PDP

Your Personal Development Portfolio

Aim  

To introduce you to some of the resources for personal and professional development at final year level.

Introduction 

It is a good idea to spend some time reflecting on your personal and professional development while you are a student, especially at final year level when you will begin to seek employment and a career. 

The PDP Process 

What is the PDP Cycle? The Personal Development Planning Cycle aims to help you learn and develop. It consists from:

1. Recording 

There are activities within this PDP (usually electronic forms) which are useful records to keep (e.g. they’ll feed into your CV, help you prepare for an interview, be useful for reflection tasks).

Your archive could be stored in a file, or electronically. You could include:

• assignments (e.g. essays, reports, presentations),
• feedback from other students, tutors, employers
• self-assessment reports 

• any reflective activities (e.g. on your learning or on your skills)

• log/diary

• photographs, video/audio tapes of your work or your practice

• certificates, references, result letters

• placement reports, appraisal reports

• records of work experiences (paid or unpaid)

• copies of application forms 

• your most recent CV.  

2. Reviewing/Reflecting
Being able to review and reflect on your learning and development is a very important skill you'll need to use on your course and in the workplace. It's a professional skill in many fields and is used in Continuing Professional Development (CPD) schemes and appraisals.

Having recorded your experiences, you then review and reflect on them, looking back and making sense of them, to help you learn and develop. It's a key part of the learning process and helps you to work out how to build on successes and improve other areas.  

useful link: http://learnhigher.ac.uk/Students/Critical-thinking-and-reflection.html

3. Planning 
Setting goals is an key part of the PDP cycle. Having reflected and come to some conclusions about your learning and progress, you need to decide what you're going to do/develop, how and when. Writing this down helps you actually do it.

Action Plans are:

• valuable tools to help you achieve what you want 
• often needed in employment (e.g. for managing projects, for appraisals)
• needed for some assessed tasks.
  

You might create Action Plans in relation to your:

• academic progress
• key/subject-specific/professional skills development
• career/employability goals
• other, more personal targets (eg financial).

This year, you'll review your progress with previous plans and develop new ones to move yourself forward. See Creating an Action Plan for further information and guidance. 

4. Developing skills 

Recognising and developing your skills is an important part of personal development planning. This folder provides information and resources about keyskills and subject-specific skills.