TOPIC 1.2

Question: Have you figured out yet what you want to be when you graduate? Answer: Graduate? I just got here! I have plenty of time---years---to think about a career and what I’m going to do in the future.

in Collaboration with Linton College It’s important to start thinking about what you might like to be when you finished your degree. It’s important to start thinking about your career as early as possible. That doesn’t mean you have to know exactly what you want to be after college---or that you can’t change your mind along the way….!!

Make a Career Action Plan in Collaboration with Linton College Make a Career Action Plan SMART

As well as using SMART in your goal setting, you should also: in Collaboration with Linton College As well as using SMART in your goal setting, you should also: Be accurate. If you want a certain job, name the role, the salary and the skills that you will need to have. Challenge yourself. Make your goals stretching and don't settle for something that's within easy reach, but also be realistic about what you can achieve. Check that your career goals are desirable. Ask yourself if it's what you really want and don't be swayed by others' expectations, e.g. parents, teachers, friends or partners Remember to keep a sense of balance. Cover all of the things that are important to achieve a good work/life balance.

in Collaboration with Linton College

in Collaboration with Linton College

in Collaboration with Linton College

in Collaboration with Linton College

in Collaboration with Linton College Self-appraisal means finding out where you are up to and what you have going for you before you plan to go any further – Have you ever had an ambition – something which fires your imagination and gets you motivated ? Some people discover early on in life what they most want to do. Others come to things they enjoy without apparently too much planning. Still others find out too late what they would have liked to have been and done. Personal Development Planning doesn’t say you have to have an ambition, but it does encourage you to make the most of your everyday opportunities to grow and develop. You don’t need to have a burning ambition in order to develop yourself. But you do need to have a motivation of some sort. It might be mainly an interest in a certain area of knowledge or else a desire to become a respected professional.

What is PDP PDP is a process of self-reflection where you ask yourself: How well am I doing? What are my strengths? What could I do better? What academic support or skills do I need to develop? What extra-curricula activities will help me toward my career goals?

What is PDP Completing your PDP will help you: keep records of your achievement and demonstrate the results of your academic and non academic work both at and outside the University of East London become a more effective, independent and confident self-directed learner and individual integrate your personal and academic development and thereby increase your ability to review your progress against the intended learning outcomes of your programme understand how you learn and relate your learning to a wider context identify opportunities for learning and personal development outside the curriculum recognise and discuss your own strengths and weaknesses improve your skills, including study, organisational, reflective and career management skills set your own personal, academic, professional and career goals and evaluate how you are progressing towards achieving them be better prepared for seeking employment and be more able to relate what you have learnt to the requirements of employers be better prepared for the demands of continuing professional, vocational and personal development develop a positive attitude to learning throughout life Adopted from University of Greenwich-Career service center

in Collaboration with Linton College The Benefit of PDP PDP is a way of making links between all your experiences and recording and reflecting upon everything that you learn from them. PORTFOLIO Like it or not, it's a competitive world out there; many students on completing their studies will be looking for a future in some of the most competitive and difficult fields there are. By keeping a PDP portfolio throughout your time at University you will be giving yourself an advantage when it comes to finding employment or starting out on your own. The Portfolio should act as a record of what you are capable of and what you have already achieved. You may want to refer to this information when you're preparing to move to the next level of study or applying for a job as it should demonstrate evidence of your experience.

How to get the most out of building up a PDP Portfolio in Collaboration with Linton College How to get the most out of building up a PDP Portfolio Be organised - as well as adding evidence of your learning as it occurs, try to organise it coherently. Arrange your evidence and development plans in an order that is logical to you. It may make sense to file documents in chronological order or to divide the portfolio into sections such as: Academic-related Career-related Personal goal-related Be selective - avoid cramming in too much. The idea is that you give evidence of the process of your personal development, rather than work you have produced. It is highly unlikely that a prospective employer will want to be presented with a folder of your work to date. Use it - To get the most out of your portfolio you should not only place evidence in it, but regularly review and use the documents in it to organise your University work, begin planning your career and give structure to your personal goals. It may be that you will be required to do some form of Personal Development Planning in the work place, so this is a useful process to practice now.

SWOT ANALYSIS A SWOT analysis is a tool to help you to reflect upon where you are in terms of your learning development Analysis is a tool for identifying your Strengths and Weaknesses, and for examining the Opportunities and Threats to your goals. Carrying out an analysis using the SWOT framework helps you to focus your activities into areas where you are strong and where the greatest opportunities lie.

SWOT ANALYSIS To give you an idea of what a SWOT Analysis looks like here's a scaled-down version: Keep copies of your completed SWOT analysis in your PDP Portfolio.

SWOT ANALYSIS TIPS When completing your SWOT analysis you may find the following prompts useful: Strengths What skills or experience do you already possess? Give examples to evidence these if you can.   What do you do well? What do other people see as being your strengths? Consider this from your own point of view and from the point of view of the people who know you. Don't be modest - be realistic. If you are having any difficulty with this, try writing down a list of your characteristics. Some of these will probably be strengths.

SWOT ANALYSIS TIPS When completing your SWOT analysis you may find the following prompts useful: Weaknesses What could you improve on? What do you do badly? What should you avoid? Do other people consider you to have weaknesses that you do not agree with? Why do they think that? Do you see weaknesses in yourself that others do not see as being a problem?

SWOT ANALYSIS TIPS When completing your SWOT analysis you may find the following prompts useful: Opportunities What resources are available to you? Consider the networking opportunities that will be available to you. How will you make best use of these? Are there any other learning opportunities, in addition to those offered by your degree programme, that you are interested in exploring? A useful approach to looking at opportunities is to look at your strengths and ask yourself whether these open up any opportunities. Alternatively, look at your weaknesses and ask whether you could find opportunities to eliminate them.

SWOT ANALYSIS TIPS When completing your SWOT analysis you may find the following prompts useful: Threats What obstacles do you face? Are there any financial issues, geographical barriers or time constraints imposed by other commitments? Could any of your weaknesses seriously threaten your opportunities whilst at Linton College? What are they? Do you have past experience of trying and failing to achieve your goals? How could this affect you? What can you learn from this experience?

PDP ACTION PLANNING Keep copies of your completed Action Plan in your PDP Portfolio.

PDP ACTION PLANNING- AN EXAMPLE Learning Development Goals An example would be: Improve my oral presentation skills Development Opportunities and Action Steps: Here list the resources that you can use in order to achieve the goal that you have identified and the actions are you going to take in order to do this. Using the above example you might: Make notes on how your lecturers and fellow students give presentations Reflect on feedback from last oral presentation from tutor and peers Practice, researching, structuring and delivering an oral presentation

PDP ACTION PLANNING- AN EXAMPLE Measurement of success : How will you know when you have successfully achieved your goal? This may involve a quantifiable result like a grade. But, it can also be based on your feelings and the opinions of others. For example, on achieving this goal I will: Feel confident giving my next presentation. Get a better response/grade than last time. Receive positive feedback from my audience. Target Date: Timing is an important aspect of planning; it will help to organise and motivate you. Be realistic, but at the same time challenge yourself. You can always change this if you do not achieve your target within the time frame

PDP ACTION PLANNING- AN EXAMPLE Evidence of achievement: Complete this once the goal has been achieved. This will be useful information when completing applications and preparing for interviews. Include concrete evidence like grades and qualifications but also, having reflected on your own development, put into words what you feel you got out of it and how the skills you have developed could be applied to other situations. Example, including both concrete and personal evidence: Presentation grade – 67% I was pleased with the structure and delivery of my presentation, especially the way that I stimulated a discussion at the end. My colleagues said that they found it informative and entertaining. I need to improve my technique in using visual aids and incorporate displaying a PowerPoint presentation using a laptop and projector. I will practice doing this before next time. I would now feel more confident about giving a presentation at an interview.

PDP ACTION PLANNING- AN EXAMPLE Reviewing your action plan: At regular points throughout your time at Goldsmiths you should review your action plan. The purpose of this exercise is: to fill in the evidence of achievement section for any skills development goals that you have already completed; to adjust target dates for any skills development goals that you have not managed to complete by the set date; to add new skills development goals that you need or want to develop (including opportunities, action steps etc.); to strike out any skills development goals that you have decided you no longer want or need to develop at this stage. Any progress (or indeed any setbacks) should be shown in your action plan as they may well have an effect on the plan overall. Try to ensure your plan is flexible enough to withstand changing circumstances and don't be afraid to start afresh if necessary.

Reflective Writing Writing reflectively gives you the opportunity to consider more deeply what you are doing, to gain further insights from your experiences and how they connect with the knowledge and theories that you have already. By recording your thoughts or reflections in a written form you will be more easily able to explore them, to make connections between them and come back at a later date to any unsolved questions that you have. The written record of your achievements will also be a useful source of reference and evidence when you fill in application forms, write a CV or prepare for an interview.

What do we mean by reflective writing? Reflective writing should include both description and analysis. Unlike the academic writing style you will need to develop at UEL-Linton, reflective writing should be written in the first person and should include your thoughts and opinions e.g. "I felt confident, as I was well prepared". You should consider such points as: What happened and what part did you play in it? What did you think went well/was good and why? What could have been improved and how? What links can you make with previous experiences? What connections can you make with theory and what actually happened? Don’t be afraid to highlight and explore your mistakes.

What do we mean by reflective writing? Reflective writing should not be: Description of what you did with no analysis. A list of excuses and reasons why others are to blame An account where everything went well or very badly. Reflection on an experience that wasn't a complete success - providing you examine how you could have done things differently - can often provide a more valuable learning experience than when everything went well.

Reflective Questionnaire

Reflective Questionnaire weak example

Reflective Questionnaire weak example

Reflective Questionnaire weak example

Reflective Questionnaire Good Example

Reflective Questionnaire Good Example

Reflective Questionnaire Good Example

Reflective Questionnaire Good Example

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