PROJECT MANAGEMENT INSTITUTE OF ZIMBABWE [PMIZ]

POST GRADUATE DIPLOMA IN PROJECT MANAGEMENT (PGDPM)

SEMESTER ONE (1) -Module 1: PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING (PDP01)

Teaching , Learning and Assessment Workbook

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Welcome to the new PMIZ PDP module.
We hope that you enjoy working through this module because it is about YOU, your hopes and
aspirations for the future and the strategies you need to adopt to achieve these.

The aim of this module is to develop, through reflective practice, your personal, academic and
professional skills to enable you to achieve your potential at PMIZ and as lifelong learners.

Learning Outcomes:

To understand, critically analyse, evaluate and explain:-

 the concept of reflective practice and its importance to ongoing self-development

 your own self development as a person, as a student and as a professional

To be able to:-

 integrate reflective practice into academic, personal and professional activities

 devise strategies and action plans to further develop your career
 effectively evaluate your performance, both individually and within diverse teams

PMIZ ACADEMIC TEAM

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PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING (PDP01)

Course Overview: CODE: PDP01

Introduction to PDP

All projects, large or small, holidays etc. benefit from proper planning and management.

The most important project you will ever be involved in is your own life.

Your career is a major part of your life and it therefore follows that you should properly plan and
manage this aspect.

There is always a large element of opportunism in career development – the right person at the
right time finding the right job. Although unpredictable elements exist, planning and personal
initiatives can play a major part in creating opportunities for development and advancement.
You should try to shape your career rather than simply react to events.

This may seem rather daunting and you may wonder where to start. This module has been
produced to help you start this task and continue the journey to a successful career. It is easier
than you think.

Aim of the Module: At the end of the module, students should be able to improve their capacity
to understand what they have learnt, how and when they are learning and reflect on, evaluate, plan
and take responsibility for own learning.

OBJECTIVES:

At the end of the course Students should be able to:

1. Participate in PDP in a range of learning contexts at each stage or level of their programme;
2. Demonstrate that they can access and use the aids and tools provided by the institution to
help them reflect upon their own learning and achievements and to plan for their own personal, educational and
career development;
3. Create their own Personal Development Plan containing information on the qualities and
skills that they drawn upon when applying for a job or further study
4. Improve the capacity of individuals to communicate their learning to others who are interested in it (for
example, academic staff and employers) (Develop themselves into more effective, independent and
confident self-directed learners;
5. Understand how they are learning and relate their learning to a wider context;
6. Improve their general skills for study and career management;

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Background
Higher Education Educators use a variety of strategies to encourage you to reflect upon and evaluate
your learning experiences and help you improve your academic work and performance and other
aspects of your development. The term Personal Development Planning has been introduced to raise
awareness of the importance of these strategies and to place them within an educational framework.

PDP as defined by the QAA is:

'a structured and supported process undertaken by an individual to reflect upon their own
learning, performance and / or achievement and to plan for their personal, educational and
career development.' Guidelines for Progress Files; HE –UK( Feb 2001)

PDP is being promoted as an enhancement of something institutions already do to help

individuals learn.

What is PDP intended to do?

PDP is centred on student learning and development. It seeks to improve your capacity to
understand what you have learnt, how and when you are learning and encourages you to
monitor, reflect on, evaluate, plan and take responsibility for your own learning.
It is intended to help you:
become a more effective, independent and confident self-directed learner;
understand the different contexts for learning;
understand how you are learning and how to prove what you have learnt;
improve your general skills for study and career management;
improve your awareness of the skills you are developing through study of the subject(s);
articulate your personal objectives and evaluate progress and achievement;
take a more holistic approach to learning and its management in modular contexts; and
to understand the importance of being able to learn in new situations and to transfer and
apply your learning in different contexts.
In the wider context of life it is intended to:
encourage a positive attitude to learning in future life and help identify possible directions
and opportunities;
help you to relate your learning to employer interests;
instill a habit of reflective thinking and practice and a commitment to personal
development
where appropriate, support Continued Professional Development

Subject specific objectives for PDP

These generic objectives for PDP will be enhanced through selected modules in the
programme. For example, PDP will help you to relate the skills you are developing to
programme specific learning outcomes or subject benchmarks or help focus on subject specific
careers advice or progress. Appendix 1; illustrates the PDP structure.

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Appendix 1: Overview of Personal Development Planning

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What is Continuing Professional Development (CPD)?

Continuing Professional Development is simply a method of ensuring that you achieve the right
abilities to do your job and maintain/enhance your expertise. It embraces everything that you do
to improve your job performance and your „lifelong employability‟.

Many Professional Institutes and Societies have a requirement for their members to keep a
record of their professional updating and development. The PMIZ membership grades aim to
encourage members to develop themselves to professional membership status.

This is also good practice for an organization striving towards being „World Class‟, a Learning
Organisation. PMIZ will be soon asking to see proof of your continuous development in order
to maintain your registration/ professional status. If your professional body does not yet have a
mandatory requirement for this along with a monitoring/ auditing system they soon will have!

Who is responsible for personal development?

To be successful it is good practice to work in partnership with your employer. You should
realize however that ownership of your CPD record is yours and no one else‟s.

The plan you establish will need to be flexible and change as your job requirements and
aspirations change. It should also be realistic, not everyone can become the Director of Nursing
or Executive Director but everybody with foresight and some planning can find challenge,
variety and interest in their job and career.

Change is continuous in all aspects of life and efforts you put into keeping abreast of new
knowledge and expanding your abilities will reap rewards when opportunities arise.

It will have become clear that a key feature of CPD is training but the important difference
between CPD and training is that CPD is structured to suit you and your career.

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Note read Clinical for technical – and non-clinical for non technical

It needs to be balanced between the clinical aspects and the non-clinical aspects (i.e.
management skills, customer care, interpersonal skills etc.) and will often involve aspects that
are not viewed as „training‟ in its strictest sense, e.g. coaching, secondment, research, reading,
agency work training others, Mentoring.

In fact many believe that the majority of our learning should come from experience and not the
traditional training and qualifications.

Remember to balance short and long term needs as well as personal ones.

How can I achieve this?

You do not have to meet targets made up of courses, in fact the collection of „points‟ is
increasingly discouraged. There are three keys to making CPD work and make learning more
effective:

 Keep the record system as simple as possible, maybe your diary, a mind map, or a Personal
Development Plan of some form.
 Start now with your current position, goals etc., the further you try to go back, the bigger the
task looks and for most of us the more reason not to start in the first place!!
 Remember if you have it in print, use it, you do not need to duplicate it on a form. Keep It Short
and Simple.
 Probably the most important point is to find a friend, mentor or coach who will give a friendly,
or not so friendly nudge to keep you on track.

Note Attending a course and getting a certificate is not in itself CPD evidence, you should show
learning and transfer. How you will or have used the learning. A one day course is not the same
as 7 hours learning!!

What’s in it for me?

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Consider the analogy of walking up a downward escalator. As time goes by, your skills and
knowledge with respect to current thinking and requirements diminishes. Therefore you need to
maintain a certain amount of learning (CPD) to stay still. More to move up!

Even skills which 5 years ago were considered transferable are now being questioned.
Communication skills, language skills, typing skills etc. are now seen by some as so situation
specific that they are no longer considered core competencies!

Those of us who are employed within organizations that are regularly appraised, can use this to
form a part of the planning of our CPD. Other activities which count towards our professional
updating include: attending branch meetings, being involved in committees, reading and
attending promotions, research, writing etc.

As we tend to learn most from our experience, this should form the bulk of our recorded CPD.
For example, if we were to take the time to record what we learnt from new situations, or from
when situations went especially well (or did not!!) this could help us not only to produce a
learning log, but we should also increase our chances of actually taking that learning forward.
All too often we think we have learnt a lesson, when in reality we do the same thing again at a
later date.

CPD is not just about work and training for work, it is about life long learning. This means that
activities like Parent Teacher Associations, school governors, residents groups, voluntary work,
Young Enterprise etc. all count if you record them in the right way!

CPD recording, portfolios, learning logs etc. are not be an end in their own right, but a vehicle
for planning, capturing and acknowledging real learning.

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Learning Styles in personal development

Find your natural learning style and use learning methods which are more comfortable for you.
This will not only make learning easier but it will also be more fun!

Here you can see the Honey and Mumford learning cycle. There is no correct starting point, but
it is important to complete the cycle for sustained learning. Starting in the right place for you
can make all the difference.

Your Training or Learning and Development Manager can help you identify this.

Areas to include in your portfolio

Create an individual development plan

 Assessment of current skills and knowledge

 Planning your learning
 Recording Learning
 Evaluating Learning

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What can I include?

Courses Your objectives, what was learnt, how you will use the
information

Mentoring Dates, outcomes, key learning for you, how you will use the
learning

Coaching Dates, outcomes, key learning for you, how you will use the
learning

Coaching – Informal Outcomes of informal coaching with peers and other

colleagues

Reading What was learnt, how you will use the information

Research Your objectives, what was learnt, how you will use the
information

Training The course objectives, what you learnt, what you will do
differently next time.

Experiences Real experiences from which you gained significant incite,

Mistakes – yours or others. Record what happened, what
you learnt, how you will have applied this.

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What is valid (for your profession)?

Clinical/Technical – role Yes – but if your role is only 50% clinical/ technical then
specific only 50% of your updating should be clinical/ technical

Yes

Business Yes – but only to the level you are working at

Customer care/ service Yes

Health and Safety Only if your job has a health and safety responsibility

Why ‘do’ CPD formally?

When we get in the habit of planning and recording our learning on a regular basis our
subconscious starts to look for learning opportunities for us in every day life. In other words if
we do not know that a learning opportunity is available we do not react to it. The “Everywhere I
look I see the same car” scenario when you have just bought a new car!

As parents we often say to our children “What did you learn at school today?” as adults we rarely
ask ourselves or our partners “What did I/ you learn today?”

Change is happening at an increased rate if we wish to maintain our „Life Long employability’
our only advantage is our ability to learn faster (and smarter).

Making learning fun and interesting

As children we learnt while we played, it was both fun and easy. As adults we learn a great deal
from our hobbies – things that we want to do and like doing. So if you want to make learning
and training fun all you need to do is enjoy yourself and play!!!

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Things to try

Keep a learning diary for a month

Make a point of discussing your learning with friends and colleagues

Other resources

 Your organizations’ training, learning and development programme

 Your Professional body’s meetings, committees, journal etc.
 The Internet, Web pages
 Local colleges, universities.

Low cost resources

 Product training from company representatives.

 Conferences – esp. the voluntary sector.
 DSTV The History Channel
 Promotions.
 Local libraries – they often have distance learning materials available for loan/low cost rent.
 National and Professional libraries.

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On the Job Template

On-The-Job Development Record

For ___________________

On-The-Job Development Record

Event:
Date__________

What I learnt:

What I will do differently in future is:

On-The-Job Development Record

Event:
Date__________

What I learnt:

What I will do differently in future is:

Career History Template

Career History

Company/ Position Held Achievements & From To

Organization what was learnt

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 What are the three most significant Why?
events in my career?

Career Development Plan Template

Career Development Plan

Career Planned Actions Time Scale Responsibility

Development Aim

Personal Training Record Template

Personal Training Record

Date Activity/ Course Key learning Points

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Notes

PDP Template

Creating Individual Personal Development Plans – PDPs

Below is a simple example to help you formulate your ideas for a personal development plan
(PDP) or Individual Development Plan (IDP).

Objective: to identify what prior learning and experience can be accredited towards the
achievements of the learning outcomes of an award and to process that accreditation.

Developing a PDP

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 How will you know when you
Your needs How can you meet those needs?
have met those needs?

What are the

challenges in
my job current
that I need to
meet?

Where do I
want to be in
2 years?

Where do I
want to be in
5 or 10 years?

How does that

fit in with
what the
practice
wants?

What
adjustments
will I need to
make to
achieve what I
want?

What
adjustments
will other
people need

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to make for
me to achieve
what I want?

What else
should I
consider?

PDP template
You can substitute your own template for a PDP that is preferred in your own workplace
or
discipline, provided it contains the minimum content and scope, as specified here.

Time span it relates to:

Date last updated:

Prioritize topics in PDP for previous year:

Justify why current topics in PDP are a priority

A personal or professional priority?

A practice or team priority?

A national priority?

Who else will be included in your PDP?

What baseline information will you collect and how? How will you identify your learning
needs?

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What are the learning needs for the practice or team and how do these match your
needs?

Have you had any patient or public input into your PDP?

What are the aims of your PDP arising from the preliminary data gathering exercise?

Action plan (give tasks, timetable, endpoints etc):

How does your PDP tie in with your other strategic plans (eg the practice’s business or
development plans)?

What additional resources will you require to execute your plan, and from where do you
hope to obtain them? (Will you have to pay any course fees or will you be able to
organize any protected time for learning in working hours?)

How will you evaluate your PDP?

How will you know when you have achieved your objectives? (How will you measure
success?)

How will you disseminate the learning from your plan to the rest of the practice/primary
care trust team and patients? How will you sustain your new-found knowledge or skills?

How will you handle new learning requirements as they crop up?

Record sheet to describe progress in work-based learning

Record your discussions, action plan, resource requirements and the outcomes that you
expect from your case study. Think how you will collect evidence that demonstrates you

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have achieved what you have planned.

Your priority topic:

Your team includes:

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PERSONAL DEVELOPMENT PLANNING

COURSEWORK

Assignment

Complete & Submit your PDP Workbook of Templates and self evaluation notes that you have
been responding to from the evaluation questionnaire during the weeklong discussions and group
work . Your submission must be reflective of chronologically gathered practice learning of self
originality. (100)

PDP PRACTICAL

Instructions to students:

For this PRACTICAL you are required to explore and reflect upon your learning and
development since starting your PGDPM programme. This will enable you to become more
conscious of your development needs and strengths and optimise your own development
through reflection and action.

The output of this practical is the documentation of that process in the form of the following:

1. Individual SWAIN Analysis (5)

2. Complete IDP with at least 3 SMART learning objectives, learning activities,

evidence, resources and timeframes. (10)

3. The corresponding Learning Agreement signed by the learner & mentor (5)

MODULE 1 PDP01 COURSEWORK TEST will be a 2 part reflective practice assessment

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Conclusions
PDPs can be effective tools in helping students to reflect and record their learning and achievements in a
structured manner and to plan their future personal and professional development. PDPs can be effective
in integrating academic and work-based learning and include outside activities and transferable as well as
more technical skills. The process can encourage deep reflection and lifelong learning habits and provide
a focus for tutor interaction and institutional support. In the built environment sector, PDP or similar have
been adopted by the relevant professional institutes as requirements, both for initial full membership and
for continuing professional development. They are therefore potentially very important tools within the
subject sector for forging links between education and practice, focused on individual students .
There is no set form a PDP should take; existing models vary in the openness or prescriptive nature of
their questions and knowledge/skills lists. Different models might be more appropriate for undergraduates
or postgraduates and can be tailored to needs of stages and courses. To maximise effectiveness, forms
need to be carefully crafted and will no doubt benefit from student and staff consultation and piloting.
Computer or web based systems are easier to update, which is crucial to the concept. Forms should be as
simple and short as possible. Emphasis should be on the individual; part-time students should be
encouraged to see them as tools to synthesise education and practice and they should be suitable for work-
based learning records. Knowledge and skills components can be derived from professional bodies‟
requirements and/or subject benchmarks. Getting the process right is probably even more important than
getting the content right. Deep learning habits are more likely to occur if PDP as an iterative process is
embedded as an integral component of the culture of courses and schools and not seen as just another
form to fill out. Students need to be convinced of the value they potentially offer, both in the short and
long run, in terms of personal and professional development. Links with professional development
requirements and career goals need to be made explicit. Students need feedback
on their forms and PDPs can be successful in providing a focus for individual tutorials. PDPs don‟t need
to be formally assessed, but getting students to fill them out can be very difficult; making them a
compulsory part of the course by being credit bearing is likely to ensure participation. They might well be
tied to activities within certain modules, linked to learning outcomes or with career development
activities. The process might even be central to guiding curriculum changes. The nature of reflection
could be explored with students and exemplary PDPs distributed to enhance good practice. Staff as well
as students must be convinced of the value of PDPs and resistance amongst staff has been perhaps an
even greater problem than amongst students. Staff development is crucial because it cannot be assumed
that everyone is well geared up to implement the systems. Costs and resources need to be realistically set;
there is no doubt that setting systems in place and properly maintaining them incur significant costs in
terms of time in work programmes, staff development and IT support.

Lastly, it cannot be over-emphasised enough that if PDPs are going to really make a difference to student
learning, they must not be seen with what Norman Jackson calls a „piece of paper mindset‟ or they are a
waste of valuable time, a meaningless bureaucratic exercise (see Jackson, 2002). PDPs can only ever be a
tool and not an end in themselves. If successful, they are a vehicle for the process of continual deep
learning and reflection undertaken in a way that, again, is not an end in itself but a focus for future effort.
This deep reflection can only really be promoted by the culture of teaching and deep learning within
departments and staff have a key role in this, both in how and what they teach and by being role models
themselves.

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