What is PDP?

About PDP
Personal Development Planning (PDP) is a process that enhances and supports your experience as a student. By engaging in PDP you will be reviewing, building and reflecting on your personal and educational development. The process encourages you to take a step back and reflect on what you have achieved in a structured way. It also involves clearly identifying your goals and planning the steps you need to take to accomplish them.

Being a student is much more than simply studying for your degree or postgraduate qualification. University provides opportunities to mix with a wide range of people, get involved in positions of responsibility, develop work-experience, volunteer work, and broaden your outlook. By planning, developing and reviewing your personal and academic goals, the PDP process will:

Enable you to be clear about what you have learnt and what you can do and enable you to communicate this effectively to others
Help you identify areas for development (anything from academic referencing to giving a presentation)
Provide resources and support to help you develop specific skills
Increase your effectiveness and confidence as a student and graduate
Improve your general skills for study and career management
Bring together your academic and non academic experience and achievements (jobs, sport, leisure, volunteering, representative roles etc)
Give you a head start with CVs and application
Enable you to get more from your university course
PDP tracks both prior and current achievements and assists in the development of transferable skills. This means you make full use of your study and maximize the benefit derived from education and other experience as a student.

A key element in PDP is identifying areas you want to improve. At Chichester we have tried to provide user-friendly resources and support to enable you to tackle particular skill areas. Take a look at the contents of the Key Skills Online software to get a flavour of some of the resources you can use. PDP will also help you to be aware of, and encourage you to use, the full range of student services and sources of help at the University.

The process aims to enhance the general relevance and application of the skills, knowledge and achievements gained at University. By recognising your personal development and through consciously setting out specific targets and goals, you will enhance your educational and career prospects.

Not convinced you need PDP? Try this exercise from Stella Cottrell.

The context (National PDP)
Personal development planning connects with other programmes developed in schools and colleges over recent years e.g. Records of Achievement and Profiles. It also mirrors the professional development processes used in many areas of employment - you can find examples of some of these in the pdp materials used by employers page. The process aims to equip you for a lifelong engagement with learning and personal development