It has become apparent that students acquire a number of skills and other qualities at university but are not able to recognize them or articulate them. By writing down your intentions and achievements you are starting the process of putting together a portfolio of evidence that will be useful for your future career.

In some professions, the process of professional development planning starts at university and continues right throughout the person’s working life. More and more businesses and industries are using this approach. They have good reasons:

reflecting on practice encourages continuous improvement;
identifying critical incidents allows employees to take appropriate steps next time such a situation arises;
being able to articulate progress increases people’s chances of being recognized and valued for their contributions – the ‘right’ people are given the right jobs for the right reasons.

This whole process can begin with you making some simple notes about the skills you have, those you want to develop and those you are developing through your course.

We now expect graduates to be able to identify and articulate their own skills; if they can’t, then they won’t even get an interview with us.
(employer, multinational company)

Questions to ask yourself include: Do your departments run anything that resembles the PDP process described here, and in the Glossary? Will your PDP be assessed? Here are some typical comments students make about themselves when they are looking at their own personal development.

I need to improve the way I manage my time and getting myself organized. For my last essay, I put everything off until the last minute then I wasted a lot of time looking for things. I now plan to keep a file of stuff just for the essay, so at least everything is together.
(first year student)

I think I’ve demonstrated my ability to work with other people quite well. The second time I chaired a meeting of our team I found I quite enjoyed it because I could make sure that we all knew what we had to do (I think I must be a bit of a control freak!)
(third year student, in a project group)

I’ve got so far behind because I can’t use Excel. I’ve got hold of a simple book on it and I’m just going to allocate the whole of next weekend to make sure I can do it.
(second year direct entry student)

I didn’t like the idea of being assessed on skills that I think you’ve either got or you haven’t got. But now I’ve discovered that I can make some improvements – my course gave me a new technique I can use. I still don’t think it should be assessed but my thinking has moved on a bit.
(first year student on a ‘personal development’ module)

What might you be asked to do for your PDP? There is a huge range of responses: some departments do not even use the expression but may use phrases such as ‘professional skills’. Typical assignments relating to PDP or similar approaches include:

assessing yourself with respect to a range of skills;
keeping a reflective journal;
creating a portfolio of evidence.

Some useful questions to ask yourself are:

What can I do?
What evidence have I got?
How can I present this so it makes sense to a reader?

Perhaps the most important one for assessment purposes is: what am I expected to do?