Welcome to the
Activities-based introduction
to the ePARs
Personal Evidence Database
(PED)
Keep clicking and this slideshow will
take you through the system
What you can put into the Personal
Evidence Database (PED)
• Information about your key activities
and achievements – useful for:
– progress review meetings with tutors
– job interviews
– CV writing
• Evidence of your academic and
employability skills
– Capture your skills experience while the details
are still fresh in your mind
– Retrieve the details whenever you need them,
e.g. for a module report or to quote to a potential
employer
What you can get back from your PED:
• An at-a-glance visual display of how your
skills evidence is growing.
• Instant updating of your Skills Progress Chart
every time you enter a new piece of information
• Selections of your data emailed to you, for
use in reports, review meetings, job
applications, job interviews, CVs etc
• Direct export of your data into the ePARs CVbuilder coming soon
Welcome page
How to start
The Welcome page offers you
two good ways into the PED,
when you begin
Access the Skills Progress Chart
anytime via the menu bar, which
appears at the top of every screen
1. Try the SKILLS route: Which
skills have you already got?
The PED helps you locate some
to get you started
Or 2. Try the ACTIVITY route:
Taking a key module? Working part-time?
Running a society? Doing community
action? Travelling?
Start capturing key aspects of it here.
A note for later: Once you’ve got data
in the PED, the Skills Progress Chart could
be your favourite way into the system
Please note:
Some sections of the PED are PRIVATE
Other sections are SHARED
The Activity route provides a log or notes, as
well as skills evidence. The log and notes are
private to you, but you can opt to share items
from them with tutors and students in your
School if you wish.
In a few Schools, the PED is used within the
curriculum and it may be a module requirement
for you to share logs or notes with your tutor.
Your Skills progress chart -- and the
evidence you enter behind it -- are
shared with your personal tutor,
automatically (read only).
The chart may be useful to look at
in personal tutorials. The skills
evidence will help your tutor write
references for you.
Once you get going, please yourself!
The two routes illustrated behind the help links
on the Welcome page are just to get you
started.
Once you get going, you can mix and match
them, picking out the sections that work best
for you.
Unless your School requires you to work with
part of the PED, it’s all optional, so you can use
as much or as little as you like.
This introduction to the PED shows
the Activity-based route
From the PED Welcome page you click
here to go to the New Activity page
This is the New Activity page
If the activity is a module, click
here for a shortcut to completing
this page
Fill in further info as
appropriate. You can edit
this at any time.
If not, use the drop-down menu to
set the type of activity.
Specify Study, Work-based
Experience or Further activities.
Then give the activity a title
Further down the same page …
If your activity is ongoing, you can
create an email link to a contact person,
e.g. activity supervisor, organiser,
tutor or mentor
Set the PED to email you a
Regular reminder to update the
Activity record if you wish.
Click ‘submit’
Next: Check the activity details
and choose a tool
You can choose any or all of these
three ways to write about the activity …
1. The ONGOING LOG helps
you note key things about the
activity while it is going on
You can amend the
activity details.
Click edit.
2. The OVERVIEW NOTES
tool helps you look back
over all or part of it and sum
things up
3. The EVIDENCE SKILLS
tool helps you record the
skills you use in the activity
You can remove the
activity from the
database. Click delete
The ONGOING LOG tool
Aim of this log: tracking
the experience as it happens
There’s a choice of seven headings to help you
analyse the experience of doing the activity and
think about ways of enhancing what you achieve
Click on any topic, any time,
to open a notes textbox
Writing in the log
Select a topic. Prompts appear under the
heading, to help you decide what to write
Enter notes in the textbox.
Click ‘save draft’ if you might want to
edit your text. Click ‘submit’ if it’s finished
You can share any ‘submitted’ section of
your log, specifying a tutor or other students
from your School. Please get their
agreement first! Everything submitted in the
section at any time -- earlier or later – can
then be read, until you switch the sharing off.
Previous entries build up
and are displayed here
They are dated
automatically
To read feedback
someone enters
about a shared
section of your
log, click here
The OVERVIEW NOTES tool
Aim of this tool:
Summing up the activity
There’s a choice of seven headings
to help you identify key outcomes
of the Activity in relation to your
performance, employability and
forward planning
If you have an Ongoing Log for the same
activity, you can refer directly to it while
working with the Overview Notes tool, and
the other way about
As with the Ongoing Log, click on any
topic to open a textbox with prompts for
your notes – the process is the same, but
the content is very different
Using the EVIDENCE SKILLS tool
Select a skill used in the activity
Here is the title of your activity
Here is your area of activity
Select the broad
skills area you want
from the first menu
Drop down the sub-menu
alongside and select the
specific skill.
This fires you into the next
screen
A textbox opens up for you to
enter some evidence
Every entry you make in the PED
is automatically dated for you
Type your evidence here
If you wish, click a button to indicate how
confident you are feeling with the skill.
The rating will appear on your Skills
Progress Chart
Click Submit
Note: Your entries will build
up and be displayed further
down on this same screen
The PED will then show you the whole entry
What would you like to do next?
You now have some further options
Stay with the activity and add
evidence for same/different skill
Click here to display
your dated entries
in ascending or
descending order
If you need stronger evidence
of this skill, turn it into a target
(creates an orange square on
your Skills Progress Chart)
OR Stick with the skill and add
evidence from a different activity
Your skills evidence changes the display
on your Skills Progress Chart
Also the broad skills headings.
(You can click on these to get to
the specific sub-skills)
The chart shows the
three basic areas of
activity. (You can
click on these to get to
the specific activities
you have entered)
Each grey square represents a specific
skill. Hover with the mouse to see the
name. Click on it to make it a target or
to enter evidence.
Once evidence is entered for a skill, its square
changes colour. Click on it to go to the evidence.
The number is the latest confidence rating (optional).
This is what is displayed below the
chart on the same screen
You can call up a snapshot of
your progress for any timewindow you like.
There are links
to other sites
with ideas for
further activities
The chart uses
5 colours.
Here’s the key
You can print the chart out, e.g. for a
meeting with a careers adviser. For
any screen, use a PED Print button or
the print function on your PC
Using the To Do list
Click here to add
an item to the list.
Enter details and
set priority level.
Press submit.
This tool is private to you
The PED can
remind you to
review your To
Do list if you
wish
Target skills come next, automatically. Click
on ‘evidence skills’ to add some evidence
Access it from
the menu bar
Your items come to
the top of the list, in
priority order
You can edit and
delete them
Using the Select Outputs tool
There’s a choice of
five ways to collate
your data, depending
on what you want it
for
This is the tool you use to get the
read-outs of your data which you
will need for various purposes
Click on any heading and you
can go on to choose the
specific material you want.
Press an email button and the
PED sends you the collated
details as an email attachment.
You can then incorporate
them in reports, jobs
applications, CVs, etc
Thank you and Good Luck –
but before you go …
• The PED is NEW. It was developed in 2002-03 with the
help of Nottingham students and staff. The ePARs team
hope you will find it useful and enjoy using it.
• You are one of the first people to see it. We would
really appreciate receiving your feedback, so that we
can improve it during 2003-04.
• Please send us an email ePARs-ped@nottingham.ac.uk
You can use the email link on the PED Welcome page.
Let us know of any problems – tell us what you do like
and what you don’t like – send us your suggestions
• Click on the other help link on the PED Welcome page if
you would like to tour the Introduction to the Skills
Route.