Personal Development Plan
Stage 1
Concrete expereince (Doing) |
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Stage 4 Active experimentation (Experimenting) |
Stage 2 Reflective observation (Thinking) |
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Stage 3 |
Kolb (1984) identifies what he calls the Experiential Learning Model, in which he describes a four-stage cycle to explain learning (table above). He says that the first stage is concrete experience, followed by Observations and reflections, which in turn lead to formation of abstract concepts and generalizations and this is followed by Testing implications of concepts in new situations.
What this means is that the learner
- does something (doing) (concrete experience)
- reflects upon what he or she has done (thinking) (reflection observation)
- theorises about possible different actions (speculating) (abstract conceptulisation)
- tries out something else (experimenting) (active experimentation)
Kolb suggests that each learner has a tendency towards a particular part of the cycle and that this is exhibited as a preference for specific types of learning activity that appeal to the individual's learning strengths. This tendency or inclination will shape how the learner prefers to lean and the effectiveness of the learning experience. He argues that the key to effective learning is to be abel to adopt a particular approach when it is appropriate: in other words be flexible.
Let me begin by asking you what you did yesterday. What about the day before that...and the day before that.
If it a week day and you came to work, then most of what you remember will be because it is part of your daily routine (buying your travel card, getting the children off to school, gettting lunch from the coffee shop down the road). If it was the week-end then you are mostly like to remember what you managed to do (because you have wanted to do it for such a long time) , what you did not manage to do (because you are feeling the effects of it now) or it was so extraordinary that it is still fresh in your mind.
If I asked you what you did last week or last month then things begin to get more hazy and last year then you may remember major things like holidays, celebrations, achievements and failures but it would take some time to pull them out of the recesses of your mind.
Now what if I ask you to tell me about your achievements last year. You may say that you did not have any achievements to gain and that may be true. However it you thought to yourself "I must do something about my weight" or "I must spend more time with my family" or I must find myself a new job", then you were on your way to achievement.
Over the years we set out on the road toward many achievements and get distracted and never achieve them. Many of these journeys (or false starts) get forgotten until you spot a article about someone who has managed to shift the pounds or you meet someone who retired early to spend more time iwth the family or you meet an ex-colleague on the train who use to work at the desk accross the way from you in the open plan office who went off to do bigger and better things oh my god "four years ago" !
Truth is that we would not expect to set out on any journey without planning, preparation and resources and these are the things that are required for journeys to our goals.
I have been writing a personal development plan now for 18 months and have found it to be helpful, informative and character building. It is liking having my conscience on the page. So successful has this method been in highlighing my areas for improvement that I have decided to write a web-page.
I suppose that I should start off by telling you what the personal development plan is. I first came across the PDP in year one of my Foundation Degree in IT at Birkbeck University in 2005. Students use the plan to set goals and targets for a set period of time. The plans consist of longer term and short term goals to help students to plan and organise their time and resource with the aim of helping them to fulfil their goals. As part of the plan we have to log our learning experiences and personal experiences. At the end of the year students have to write a review of the plan if they found it useful or not and why. I believe that PDP are going to introduced across all degrees in the future.
According to the Year 3 PDP handbook Personal Development Planning is designed to help students become "increasingly confident and self directed learners across their personal, academic and professional life" . (Page 3)
Personal Development Planning is also about self managing your career and professional development. It is intended that each year you will add to an damend documentaion in your PDP portfolio so that the portfoli is a rich resource from which you can draw fro job applications, job promtions, career change and job interviews while you are at Birkbeck and when you have left the university." ( Year 3 PDP hand book - page 3)
Personally I have found the plan very useful. I have grown a great deal whilst using it because it has forced me to look at how I go about achieving things. The use of short term goals has helped me to complete bigger goals and by having to review the plan at the end of the year I can see where things have not gone right and how I can approach things better in the future.
I have chosen to use this format for my PDP this time round because one of the comments that was made about my second year PDP is that my logs have to be more succinct. By having the PDP in this format I am forced to be more concise. The templates are already set up and this format reminds me of the need to be more succinct. This method is also less time consuming because all templates and formats are already in place. Because I will be using templates I will be measuring the same values every time (e.g. assignment/test preparation and outcome, fruit and veg eaten each day, time spent revising each day ). I will be using radial button to answer questions rather than writing paragraphs and will probably have a notes sections. I have decided to log all of my tests and assignments, this will be particularly useful as it will inform my preparation for my BA course in IT. A habit which I have which I am hoping to lose is that I find it hard to do regular amounts of work in small chunks, I prefer to do thins in one sitting. I hope to change this with the PDP we page.
One thing that I have have learnt over the last 18 months of doing my course is that if I do not use the IT skills each time I sit down to use them it is like starting all over again, it is almost as thought I have never seen the materials before.
At the top of the page and on the bottom left, I have put links to the sites that I visit daily, to the left . On the left you will see a number of links to learning logs that will be completed during the course. I intend to use the links on the right for news headlines that interest me through out the year.
On the right I will try and link to relevant stories or articles (subjects of interest ) that relate to that page.
- Assess the gap between where you are and where you want to be
- Plans should include short term goals (and subsequent rewards)
- Develop systems for monitoring and assessing progress
- Develop a communication strategy that allows people to give feedback
- identify training, resources and support needs and plan how to meet these
- Plan steps from beginning to end
- Plan short term goals in detail - don't just put aside time decide what goals you are going to achieve during the short steps