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Let's think more then about the medium term goals.
And these are the ones that are going to link
directly to your PDP at this point.
You need to think about shorter term.
So a good way to phrase that at the moment is to think about
what you want to achieve by the end of first year.
You are nearly halfway through your first year studies,
it's only been just short of three months,
but you're already halfway through
the academic year if you like.
So you need to think about
what you want to get out of that first year,
and particularly what you want to achieve in that first year.
So it might be within your classes and perhaps you want
to achieve an exemption in all of your first year classes,
which means you're looking for a 60% or above average
across every class that you do.
So that is also going to help you achieve a merit for the year.
So is that something that's feasible for you?
Do you think that's a realistic expectation for you?
These are the questions you need to think about
when you're setting your goals.
You also might perhaps be thinking about something
to do with the individual assignments
or activities within the classes.
So you want to improve on your assignment marks
within a class to continue to increase the results that you're getting,
to make more active use of the feedback,
to become more involved in different aspects of it.
So within your classes but also within your professional development
what do you want to get out of your first year
beyond passing all of your classes?
Are there other areas and aspects that you want to work on?
So you also want to think about what barriers are there
to you achieving these goals.
So when you're setting your goals and objectives
for the next six months
which is what we're going to ask you to do during week 11,
you need to be thinking about what's
going to stop you achieving those barriers.
And it's when you're thinking about these goals
that you should be looking at what's going to help you
achieve those goals and what's going to stand
in the way of you achieving those goals.
Because then you can actively do something about those.
What can you do to mitigate the impact
of any barriers that are in place?
So a key element within any process,
and this actually extends into business management,
is if you're trying to put a plan in place to achieve something
what you have to do is to put in measures.
And performance measurement is an area of business,
it's a very key aspect of managing an organisation
in achieving its goals.
Now the same holds true to you individually.
You need to have a way of measuring your success,
and by measuring you usually will then turn those goals
into something that is very much tangible to you.
So this is about how you set tangible goals.
For example, achieving exemption level.
And that's a way of then measuring how close to success you are,
or how you've achieved it.
Tangible measures are very useful
in giving you a measure of your progress.
So it also helps you from a motivational point of view
because you can actually chart out how well you're doing
and achieving what you're setting out to do.
So that's the first step in the PDP process.
The idea of looking at your goals,
examining what you want to do,
where you're trying to get to?
The second stage is actually very challenging,
and that's about evaluating your current position.
And I think this is probably the stage that people find the most difficulty with.
it's not something that necessarily is natural to us to do,
to be reflective.
So we're looking at how your personal development
becomes much more tangible.
So rather than being better at teamwork
you want to be good at teamwork,
by trying to think about how you measure that
and where you are at the moment,
it becomes more real to you
and it becomes more something that you
can actually actively engage with.
So what we're going to ask you to do as part of the
individual preparation for your group sessions for week 11
is to use the ten skills that I've just gone through
as a framework to evaluate how you've got on
over the last semester and where you are
just now with regard to those.
Now, this is easier said than done.
So using a framework like this can be very helpful.
So all I want you to do is to think about different questions.
So how successful was your personal activity
during the different situations you've been in over this semester?
So think about the different situations that you've been in
within MDP1 and perhaps elsewhere in your studies,
and think about what happened during that activity.
How successful was your personal activity?
What were the relative strengths and weaknesses?
Now you can use that ten step framework
of graduate attributes to get you to think of
different dimensions of the situations that you've been in
and the project you've been involved in.
What were the different strengths and weaknesses
at the different points within that?
And very importantly what evidence can you give
or point to, to justify that assessment?
Now relating back to what I mentioned
about competence based interview,
this is a key skill that you will develop
through the Management Development Programme
by linking into PDP or getting you to actually look for evidence.
So saying that you think you got better at teamwork
or you're quite good at teamwork,
is too airy fairy; it doesn't really say anything.
You need to be able to point to different activities,
a particular situation that worked well,
how your team achieved its goals,
how consensus worked quite effectively.
So you need to think about where you can show and point to
different activities and different things that happened,
that is evidence of your achievement,
of your skills or knowledge,
or indeed as evidence of an area
that you need to put additional work into.
So it's about evaluating that evidence.
And part of that is a process of reflection on your part,
you need to think through the different aspects
of the situation very carefully,
and try and look for why and how
things came out the way that they did.
So in a particular teamwork situation
which is something that's very common over your first semester here,
why certain situations and certain team meetings
maybe worked very effectively and why others didn't.
What was actually going on in those?
Did you use a structure or a different approach,
or was someone behaving in a particular way
and you dealt with it using a particular approach?
So really getting you to analyse
and being analytical about what happened,
because this ultimately is your professional practice,
it's about how you go about things.
At this point I also want you to dig something out
from earlier on in the semester.
I want you to look back at the five objectives that you set yourself
at the beginning of the semester,
and see how you've got on with those.
Did you set them and never look at them or think about them again?
Is it something that you've been aware of?
How have you made progress within that particular area?
What's actually happened in terms of you
achieving those five objectives?
And that will link into the individual work
that you're going to be doing in preparation for the group session.
So another key aspect of this self-reflection process
is actually starting to learn and reflect about
how you personally learn and develop most effectively.
All of us learn best in a slightly different way;
it's a very individual thing.
Some of us for example will learn far more easily
about a particular subject by someone talking to us.
So people like that when they're listening for example
to a presentation will absorb that information very effectively.
Others prefer to read,
they would prefer to have a written report to look through
rather than to listen to someone talking about it.
We have very different styles of learning.
Now, there's an area called meta cognition,
which is basically about knowing how you learn,
or knowing about knowing.
And one of the key skills that you can develop
during your time at university,
and certainly that will help you be effective at university,
is to gain insight into your own learning processes.
How do you learn best?
What is the best way for you to get to grips with a subject?
What works well for you?
And what circumstances for learning do not work as effectively?
In general most people learn best by doing,
and that's true for most of us.
And as a result of that that's why you will spend
so much time at university involved in actual projects,
individual assignments, group projects,
by actually being engaged in doing something,
linked specifically to that particular model of learning;
experiential learning.
Some of you will take to that very well,
others will find that more tricky and will have to develop
your particular attributes in those areas.
So learning and gaining insight into how you learn effectively
is a really important thing for you to do during your studies.
And you will continually develop that.
Because once you leave as a graduate
you will continue to have to learn things.
There will be things that come up in your career
that you need to find out about,
new technologies, new areas;
how are you going to do that when it's entirely self-directed?
So that kind of information makes you more efficient
and effective in your future learning.
So the third area and the final area for this session,
is the endpoint of this.
We've looked at what the goals are,
what you're trying to achieve where you want to get to.
We've also looked at that reflective activity
of evaluating it, analysing where you are just now.
So you know where you are just now,
you know where you're trying to get to,
the next stage is a plan.
Now this is the final part of the process,
is to come up with an action plan.
But this is the point where I think
a lot of people let themselves down,
because they have gone through this process
and have an idea of the areas that need development,
but they don't then turn that into concrete plans.
And if you don't you're unlikely to do anything about it,
apart from to vaguely think through things.
So key to this stage is to be
explicit in managing your own development,
you want to define what you need to do.
And right it down in as much detail as possible,
tie down exactly what it is that you want to do,
and then define when and how you will go about doing that.
So how will you learn and improve your teamwork skills?
How will you learn about leadership?
How will you improve your organisational skills?
Set yourself objectives within the timeframe
that you're looking at for doing different activities.
Perhaps it's something that you're going to
go and do research on or learn about,
perhaps it's an IT skill that you want to look at
in more detail and develop.
Or perhaps it's something that you just want to be
much more aware of as you're going through the coming semester.
So it might be to do with teamwork and about being
very thoughtful and mindful about the way you
act within a team and in particular situations.
Perhaps you're going to try to gain more clear consensus
within your group when a decision is taken.
And think about and observe the different processes that are going on
to gain more insight into that aspect of team working.
But be specific about it.
Make clear any milestones that you want to place
over the period that you're planning for.
Now, when you're going to be doing it this week
we're going to ask you to plan to the end of first year,
so you're going to be coming up with a plan
for about six months.
So when are you going to do the different activities
that you want to put together?
You also need to put in review points,
because the last thing you want to do
is to come up with a plan for six months
that you don't then look at again for six months.
By which point the opportunity has passed to do the different activities.
So you need to set up a review plan and a review period,
and actively managed your own development in this area.
So a final area that's worthwhile mentioning is another PDP.
PDP is an acronym generally you will find
and the university refers to Personal Development Planning.
But it is also an acronym for personal development portfolios,
which is not so much of a process as an actual mechanism
for creating a portfolio which showcases your knowledge
and experience and abilities.
Now what that means for you,
it's used in many different ways, portfolios of this nature,
but for you as a Business School student
the main audience for this is likely to be employers.
Now this isn't something that we're going to ask
you to do just now in your studies,
but it is something longer term that you should be thinking about.
And it might be worthwhile for you to start
to get into the habit of looking at what your performance is,
and how that relates to your personal development.
This will give you a body of evidence when you look at employment
and careers and it will link very nicely into what you do in later years.
So perhaps you might want to think about putting together
a folder where you keep good examples of your work and achievements.
Maybe assignments, it might be a group project,
it might be a description of something that you've done.
As well as whatever it is that you've produced
that item that you're going to place within your portfolio
you also need to document what that actually demonstrates,
what the strengths are, what it's showing for you.
Because while it's very clear to you now what you think
this is a good example of,
in six months' time you probably will forget it.
So this development of a portfolio will give you
a resource space for preparation when you come to employment.
Because of the competence based nature of employment
the employing process,
you need to actually start to think about
what evidence you're going to present.
And using a portfolio is a very good way of doing that.
And we will come back to that later in your studies,
although not in first year.
So to summarise,
you have a number of tasks for week 11.
And what we're going to ask you to do is to go through
using the template provided steps one and two of the PDP process.
And then start to think in development terms
about activities that you're going to do,
and we'll link that into the group activity that you'll do this week.
You'll create a development plan for the rest of the year,
and within that we want you to put in five development objectives.
Now, these might be linked to the five development objectives
that you set at the start of the year
if you still feel these are valid.
But what you will want to do is to give lots of detail
So going through that third step
come up with all of the details of exactly what you're going to do
how you're going to measure it,
when you're going to do it by
and when you're going to review that process.
There is also an online personality questionnaire
that we'll ask you to complete before the group project.
So once you're in your groups in week 11
you're going to be doing this from the point of view of a group
and going through an evaluation process
of how your group has performed this semester.
And it's that that will be the basis of the work that you submit
for week 11 of semester.