Personal Development Planning: A Guide to Self-Improvement

Personal Development
Planning
Student Pack

What is personal development planning?
This is a process that enables individuals to identify, manage and develop their skills. It
allows students to demonstrate that they can think critically about their own development
and how they have achieved goals.
It allows students to take responsibility for their own learning and development and
provides a framework to develop skills required at university or in employment.
As part of the student journey in this Study Skills module, students will complete:
1. A personal development portfolio (PDP)
2. A personal action plan
3. Undertake the action plan
4. Evaluate the action plan
Suggested further reading:
To understand more about the benefits of personal development planning and its
relationship to study skills, the following is some suggested useful reading:
Cottrell, S. (2019) The Study Skills Handbook (5th ed.) London: Red Globe Press
(Chapter 3 – Employability and preparing for your future, pp.47-62).
Creating a Personal Development Portfolio (PDP)
The starting point of the portfolio is ‘Where am I now?’, where you identify your strengths
and weaknesses at the start of the course. Any weaknesses you have might include time
management, stress management or written communication. Strengths you may have
could be organisational skills, numerical skills or working as part of a team.
There are various other activities related to aspects of personal and professional
development, both in relation to Study Skills and your future career. The completion of
these tasks, along with other short pieces of self-reflection and evaluation, will be collated
and form the basis of your PDP document.
This will be carried out throughout the duration of the course and your Study Skills tutor will
provide you with guidance each week as to how to complete the various tasks in the PDP.
At the end of the course, students will complete a re-evaluation of ‘Where am I now?’ and
analyse the journey that they have taken.
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What do I put in my portfolio?
The following checklist provides students with guidance as to what should be included in the
Personal Development Portfolio.
Checklist:
ITEM (from this PDP Student Pack)
 Front cover (Name, course and image of your choice)
 Contents page
SECTION 1
 ‘Where am I now’ questionnaire?
 ‘Where am I going’ questionnaire?
 Future personal and professional achievements
SECTION 2
 Self-evaluation
 Peer evaluation
 Personality analysis
SECTION 3
 SWOT analysis
 Self-evaluation of Core Skills
SECTION 4
 Personal action plan and SMART plan (short term)
 Professional action plan and SMART plan (long term)
 Professional development cycle in action
SECTION 5
 Time management questionnaire
 Time / activity logs
 Analysis of Time Logs
SECTION 6
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 Learning style questionnaire and evaluation
 Kolb’s learning cycle worksheet
SECTION 7
 Final Evaluation
Appendix: PDP Diary
 Unit log / diary – to be completed on a weekly basis to reflect your PDP
journey
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SECTION 1: Questionnaires – Where am I now? / Where am I going?
Name: Martin Brown
University: University of the West Scotland
Course
Details
Course Title:
Full/Part-time:
Start Date /
Finish Date:
Modules being
taken:
*
*
*
*
*
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TASK 1A: Questionnaire 1 – ‘Where am I now?’
Complete the following questionnaire and provide some details about where you are now
on your personal and professional development journey.

Previous /
Other
qualifications
*
*
*
*
*
*
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