Personal Development Plan and Research Skills Assignment - Semester 1

This assignment presents a comprehensive personal development plan (PDP) focused on enhancing academic and research skills. It begins with an introduction to PDP and its importance in identifying strengths and weaknesses, followed by a SWOT analysis to assess personal attributes. The assignment emphasizes the importance of note-making as a key learning technique, particularly in the context of acquiring computer skills. It also includes a detailed research plan, differentiating between primary and secondary research methods. The student outlines their plan to improve computer skills by enrolling in a diploma program and creating a self-assessment plan to track progress. The assignment highlights the importance of setting SMART objectives to achieve long-term goals and enhance professional development. This assignment contributes to Desklib, a platform offering AI-based study tools for students.

Academic and
Research Skills

Table of Contents
INTRODUCTION...........................................................................................................................3
TASK 1............................................................................................................................................3
Task 2..............................................................................................................................................5
TASK 3............................................................................................................................................6
TASK 4 ...........................................................................................................................................8
CONCLUSION.............................................................................................................................10
REFERENCE................................................................................................................................10

INTRODUCTION
Personal development is a consistent process which is undertaken by an individual to
enhance and document new competencies, knowledge and skills by setting up certain targets,
and measure the outcome of learning and training undertaken to by him for self development.
PDP basically is a statement of an individual's ambition, competency skills, learning and
training progress, and steps to measure how well plans have been achieved so far. It helps an
individual to get self reflection of his knowledge, capabilities and academics enlightening him
about probable areas for development (Bell, 2010).
The assignment is based on finding out key areas of lacking and strengthen of a person
and will assist them in conducting research studies. Moreover it will also give a detail about key
areas of improvement for an individual so that long an short terms objectives could be achieved
by overcoming the weaknesses
TASK 1
Every individual is unique who functions differently in accordance to his personality and
different traits. To gain success in one's life as well in career one needs to shape his path for
achieving his goals. In this aspect, it becomes critically important for person to have a better
understanding of his strengthen and weakness as knowing weakness helps you to evaluate things
that might serves as an obstacles holding you back and thus needs to be worked upon by finding
out ways to overcome them. Strength on other hand helps you building up your confidence,
constricting down specific areas of scopes and helps in growth as knowing your strong points
one aims higher and achieve much more (AlHassanb and Wood, 2015).
PDA helps an individual in personal skill audit by preparing a plan of action consisting
of SWOT of individual and to review and evaluate areas to be developed and strengthens that
could assist them in their career growth in a certain period of time.
STRENGTH WEAKNESSES
 One of my major strength my  My weakness is the extended version of

commitment towards whatever task I
do. Key philosophy I follow in my life
is not be mediocre in doing anything .
Whatever I do I put my heart and soul
in completing that work with the best
possible way I could think off. I don't
believe in merely completing any thing
just for sake of finishing it. Thus, once
a task is assigned to me a person can
count on me and could be assured of
quality work.
 Since my school days I have been a
proactive in organizing school events
which continued during college which
helped me in enhancing my team
building skills. It made me capable to
take up new roles and responsibilities -
giving me experience of working with
people having different attitudes,
behaviour as well as way of doing
things which enabled me to enhance
my patience level and listening skills
too.
 I am quiet strong and efficient when to
comes to managing situations and
leading people. It is so because I
believe that to a good leader one need
to make its team mates to be
participative while taking ant decision.
It not only provides you with many
viable solutions to choose within but
my being highly dedicated. Its serves to
be lacking during group assignments as
in case of group tasks I become unable
to remain patient if I find my fellow
members to be less sincere about work
quality. This leads to me being
overburdened and stressed out .
 Another one of the major area of my
lacking is that I am not able to delegate
work to others if I am not convinced
that they posses necessary skills
requires to complete that task or they
can do it better or more efficiently than
me.
 My greatest lacking lies in me being
mediocre in technology updates. In
today's time of “working smart with
technology” where different software
are used for performing various tasks I
just have basic computer knowledge
comprising little experience on working
on MS Office.

also motivates them but also helps in
building their confidence in their
leader. Besides this, my competency
lies in putting limited resources in best
possible use.
SMART objectives: -
S- To improve my computer skills, majorly my MS Office skills.
M - I will join a institute providing diploma in MS Office .
A- One year diploma will be sufficient to provide advance knowledge of MS Office
R - MS Office is the most utilized software. It comprises MS Excel that is the major
tools in data entry, accounting and making budgets, data analysis etc.
T- My diploma is expected to be completed by 8 June,2019.
TASK 2
Note making is the practice of recording the essence of information captured from a
transient source such as during lectures, oral discussions at meeting etc. It forms an essential and
effective technique in learning process as it helps the learner to recall and understand lesson later
on after session as one cant remember every piece of information discussed during a verbal
speech i.e. lecture, meetings, seminars etc. Note making is comes to be useful when you have to
extract key points from pile of large information from books, lectures discussion etc. at short
point of time given (Baker and Henson, 2010). Essential factors that are requisite for effective
note making comprises active listening skills and reading strategies which assist in converting
large information in short more understandable form. Note making helps a person in
paraphrasing and creating synopsis of essential information leading to enhancing learning of an
individual.

In order to develop my computer skills I will join some institutes that provides diploma or other
short courses for learning MS Office. Note making skills are suppose to be come useful during
my computer learning class as:-
Study of computer technology comprises both theory and practical learning. As, theory
part involves a lot of terminologies, definitions and illustrations my active listening skills will
help me to note down these theoretical aspects in the form of diagrams that I can summarize later
on for my quick understanding purpose (Tang and Tseng, 2013) .
There are various books available in the market a swell as online that I will be referring
to for gaining extra knowledge and for making out notes on key essential topics. Also I will be
watching online videos available online explaining various steps of performing various excel
functions.
Reading and learning huge amount of data and notes that are available to me from
various sources like classroom lectures, books and journals etc. is practical tough and time
consuming task . Also not every information available is of equal importance to be learn out.
For making my learning process I will be summarizing the huge data and information into bullet
points and will be paraphrasing the learning material in my own language as it becomes easy to
memorize your own notes.
TASK 3
Research plan is a document which clearly defines the basic objectives of conducting a
particular research. It includes a sequential process starting from setting objectives of conducting
research, gathering relevant information through various sources and methods, and then interpret
the hypothesis set to find out the viable solution of the given problem (Doz, 2011). It is used by
company's to gain market knowledge about customer's needs and wants, competitors strategies,
market conditions, government policies etc. and to develop or modify its business strategies in
accordance to this information to gain edge over rivals by manufacturing products as per
customers specifications. Various steps involves in preparing a research plan are:-
 Setting objectives or defining issues
 Research Strategies
 Resources
 Biographical Plan
 Research support

 Preliminary studies and development reports
Mentioned below are two types of research that can be adopted by a firm or n individual
according to his objective of research topic (Hood, 2011).
Primary research: This research is related to collecting first hand information that has
not been collected by anyone before. It involves methods like face to face interviews, surveys,
use of questionnaire etc. to collect information directly from the respondents or customers or
target audience.
Secondary research: Secondary research involves collecting and analysing data or
information that has already been gathered or used by some other person. It involves collecting
data through secondary sources of information like books, journals, through internet, companies
report etc.
I In this era of digitalization computers have become intrinsic part of life as every rely on
these intelligent machines for a varied functions like calculations, communications, storing of
data, technological processes and to solve different problems related to our day to day life, it
has become critically efficient for an individual to learn computers (Israel and et. al., 2010).
Thus, to overcome my lacking of having limited computer knowledge and to know what
different options and benefits are associated with it I conducted a research on what are the best
possible ways, methods and sources are available the market for me to deal with my this
lacking.
For finding out the best suitable source I conducted both primary as well secondary
research.
In my primary research process I went to different institutes which are providing
computer various computer courses and diploma. I gathered information direct from the
respondents about what are the probable scope of the a particular course I am planning to
undertake, its duration, what is the fees structure and probable outcomes.
In secondary research I opted to gather information through internet about various
institutes, their ratings, various online portals giving online coaching, scope of this particular
diploma and also refereed some of my classmates to know gain more knowledge about any other
source that I can opt to learn advance computer skills.

TASK 4
In order to improve my computer skills, I realized that I should enrol my self in
computer training institutes providing diploma in advance computer skills. For this, I conducted
a through research both primary and secondary to find out the most appropriate institute in terns
of my learning requirements as well as my budget. I should attend various seminars, group
activities and conferences (Veal, 2017). To measure my performance and learning outcome I
prepared the below mentioned personal development plan for self assessment of my skills and
performance.
My personal
development
targets
Long or
short
term
targets
How will I attain
my targets?
What activities
do I applied to
undertake to
accomplish my
objectives? What
support do I
need?
Date of
review
Progress
made
towards
target
Further action
needed
Actual
data of
accomplis
hing
targets
Advanced
computer
skills
Short Enrolled in
diploma for
advance
computer
learning
7Dec,
2018
50% Need to
practice
certain excel
functions like
V-Lookup,
merging
documents
7 June,
2019
Inefficiency
to delegate
responsibiliti
Long Taking guidance
from my mentor
and spouse
8 June,
2019
30%, as I
have started
being
I still lacks in
understanding
perspective of
7 June ,
2020

es specific
about what I
want making
myself clear
to fellow
group
members
about role
and quality
of work
expected
from them.
my fellow
members and
thus don't trust
on them, still
specific about
timelines and
quality of
work
Impatient Long Taking help of
my mentor and
spouse
8 june,
2019
40% as I still
loose
patience in
case of
deadlines of
a particular
task is
exceeded
Working on
my lacking by
enrolling
myself in team
building
activities, I am
learning to
change my
attitude from
not trusting
and been
specific to let
it go
philosophy
8
June,2020
CONCLUSION
From the assignment undertaken it is concluded that personal development plays a
crucial part in developing skills,knowledge and competencies of an individual and also to find

out, analysis and over come his weakness through self realization. A SWOT analysis is been
prepared by me which helped me to realise by lacking in advance computer skills which is a
very essential factor to be successful in today's world as computer's forms the base of every
activity. By conducting a research process I came to know about various sources that available
for me to overcome my areas of lacking. Moreover I have also prepared a detailed Personal
Development plan to measure my till date progress in handling my weakness and further areas
and actions that are required to fully overcome them.
REFERENCE
Book and Journal
Bell, S., 2010. Project-based learning for the 21st century: Skills for the future. The Clearing
House. 83(2). pp.39-43.
AlHassan, L. and Wood, D., 2015. The effectiveness of focused instruction of formulaic
sequences in augmenting L2 learners' academic writing skills: A quantitative research
study. Journal of English for Academic Purposes. 17, pp.51-62.
Baker, G. and Henson, D., 2010. Promoting employability skills development in a research-
intensive university. Education+ Training. 52(1). pp.62-75.
Doz, Y., 2011. Qualitative research for international business. Journal of International Business
Studies. 42(5). pp.582-590.
Hood, S., 2010. Appraising research: Evaluation in academic writing. Springer.
Israel, B.A., Coombe, C.M., Cheezum, R.R., et. al., 2010. Community-based participatory
research: a capacity-building approach for policy advocacy aimed at eliminating health
disparities. American journal of public health. 100(11). pp.2094-2102.
Kazdin, A.E., 2003. Research design in clinical psychology.
Milsom, A. and Glanville, J.L., 2010. Factors mediating the relationship between social skills
and academic grades in a sample of students diagnosed with learning disabilities or
emotional disturbance. Remedial and Special Education. 31(4). pp.241-251.
Roach, M. and Sauermann, H., 2010. A taste for science? PhD scientists’ academic orientation
and self-selection into research careers in industry. Research Policy. 39(3). pp.422-434.
Tang, Y. and Tseng, H.W., 2013. Distance learners' self-efficacy and information literacy skills.
The journal of academic librarianship. 39(6). pp.517-521.
Veal, A.J., 2017. Research methods for leisure and tourism. Pearson UK.