Incorporating Personal
Development Planning and eportfolio use into curriculum
design
Janet Strivens
Rob Ward
Our starting points:
• PDP connects directly to ‘core institutional business’ –
curriculum, assessment and overall student
development/experience, especially in the context of
enhanced offers for 2012.
• The EPPI Research Synthesis (2003) confirmed that Personal
Development Planning did indeed ‘support the improvement
of students’ academic learning and achievement.’
• ‘graduate attributes in their fullest sense are much broader
than just employability – graduate attributes have relevance to
all aspects of the student experience and therefore have a
range of linked agendas, e.g. curriculum renewal, HEAR
(Higher Education Achievement Report), work-related
learning, PDP (Personal Development Planning) and
ePortfolios’.
• Unless graduates are capable of articulating and evidencing
the learning and development that they have developed
through their undergraduate education they are likely to be at
a substantial disadvantage in the graduate labour market.
So - why is PDP important ?
• It is about students becoming
autonomous, independent, thinking for
themselves
– the real purpose of HE
• It enables students to articulate what
they can do
PDP is therefore:
• not a bolt on extra;
• an integral part of learning in HE;
• best addressed by all academic teaching
staff;
However….
Academic staff:
view PDP in qualitatively different ways
and
many have difficulty with valuing PDP.
Why?
Students:
‘In feedback obtained from students, it is evident that
they initially find consideration of the ideas and themes
of PDP and employability irrelevant and are merely
eager to get on with `doing ****’.
Employability as a driver is unlikely to work for all all of
the time…
Academic study emphasises individual achievement and
engenders competition, whereas PDP activities often
emphasise honesty (as a basis for development) and
collaboration…
One challenge… getting beyond a
structural view…
There are a number of different models of PDP implementation which have
been adopted across the sector to support the needs of particular groups of
learners:
Discrete - where PDP is conceived as additional to, and separate from, the
curriculum. Here, learners tend to be encouraged to engage in PDP, with
perhaps some support from tutors or others, but whether, when and how they
do so is left largely to the learners themselves.
Linked - where PDP is viewed as being parallel to, but also having explicit links
to, the curriculum.
Embedded - where PDP is embedded in specific elements of a programme,
which provide the main support for PDP.
Integrated - a whole-curriculum approach where all or most parts of a
programme involve activities which are aligned with PDP processes, including
those in the workplace.
Extended - where PDP processes are included in the curriculum but also serve
explicitly to integrate learning activities (such as volunteering or peer
mentoring) outside the curriculum.
And the ‘pedagogy of the status
quo…’ (Cowan, 2011)
1. Programmes are conceived by teachers.
2. Programmes or courses are subdivided into self-contained
modules;
3. Each module has its own explicit learning outcomes which the
course team has decided that learners should achieve;
4. Assessment is arranged by the course team to validly and
reliably determine achievement of the intended learning
outcomes;
5. Learning and teaching activities should be purposefully
planned to support achievement of the intended learning and
development;
6. The desirable integration and compatibility of items 3-5 is
described as alignment, and is featured as a desirable goal or
ultimate quality of well-designed curricula.
Prezi presentation
Available at:
http://prezi.com/oit3briejtov/incorporatingpersonal-development-planning-and-eportfolio-use-into-curriculum-design/
The Patchwork Text
Janet Strivens – Educational Development Division,
University of Liverpool
Anthony Sinclair – Archaeology, Classics and
Egyptology,
University of Liverpool
Origins of the Idea
• A three-year multi-disciplinary research
project 2000-2003
– e.g. Greek Tragedy, Social Work, Biology
• 3 higher education institutions
– Anglia Polytechnic (Anglia Ruskin) – lead,
Nottingham Trent, Cambridge
• Incorporated:
– Reflective learning, self- and peer-assessment,
collaborative learning, metacognition
– Increased student engagement through weekly,
short tasks and immediate feedback
How it worked…
• Curriculum
– Based on collaborative group work
– Weekly, short (c. 500 word) writing tasks (the
‘patches’), different genres
– Shared with peer group for immediate discussion /
feedback
– Tutor samples tasks for feedback, assesses final
synoptic text
• Assessment
– A reflective synthesis which uses (a selection of)
the weekly writing tasks as evidence of ‘stitching
together’ the patches
Issues (positive / negative)
• Encourages
– Increased student engagement
– Development of writing skills through frequent
practice / feedback / authentic audience
– Awareness of alternative perspectives / responses
to tasks
– Ability and willingness to assess own and peer
performance
• But
The Patchwork Text Today
• ‘Patchwork media’: beyond writing tasks, patches
may be a wide range of digital artefacts
• Frequently associated with the use of e-portfolio
technology (which lends itself to synoptic
commentary linked to different artefacts as
evidence
• Many different disciplinary contexts and levels of
adaptation of original model to different
circumstances, no ‘canonical’ model
Example
• “Palaeolithic Cave Art in Europe”
• Level 3 module
• Develops on knowledge gained from level
2 “The Archaeology of the Upper
Palaeolithic in Europe”
• Assessment
– Coursework essay – 25%
– Presentation – 15%
– Exam – 60% (two essays in 2 hours)
The ‘Patches’
• Concept map – “What is the the nature of
Palaeolithic art?”
• Timeline – the key ‘events’ in the study of Pal. Art
• Critical Review of an article – ‘dating’
• Critical synopsis of 4 articles – naturalism in art;
figurines
• Concept Map – “The technology of Palaeolithic Art”
• Critical Review of an article – ‘interpretive paper’
• A Research proposal
• Synoptic reflection on learning outcomes of module
Concept Map
Why these ‘patches’
• General Learning Skills as well as module learning
• Concept Maps – familiarity, encourages broader
picture
• Critical review of an article – critical reading skills
for dissertation
• Critical Synopsis – background chapter in
dissertation
• Timeline – how disciplines develop – ideas & data
• Research Proposal – research led teaching
My synoptic commentary
• An opportunity to ‘discuss’ not lecture
– Facilitated a richer contact time
• Encouraged me to think in greater depth about
their learning skills
• Provided me with better feedback on individual
strengths /weaknesses in learning skills
– Critical reading, synopsis, understanding causality,
research pragmatics
• ‘Blackboard’ does not lend itself to a patchwork
text
Student Comments
• “Patchworks are a lot more work than a single
assessment, but also force me to study at home
regularly. All in all a good thing…”
• “Ptexts work very well, welcome change to single
question essay assessment”
• “The patchwork texts are very useful and I’ve found
that the feedback has been prompt and helped me
gain knowledge & understanding on Palaeolithic Art”
• “The patchwork texts enabled me to continue
working and re-read each section of work rather than
put it to one side until revision time!”
Further Information
• Original project published in a Special Issue
of Innovations in Education and Teaching
(SEDA Journal) 2003 Vol. 40. No. 2
• Current Project
– Digitally Enhanced Patchwork Text Assessment
– Funded as a JISC Innovations project
– www.jisc.ac.uk/whatwedo/programmes/elearning/l
tig/depta.aspx
– www.wlv.ac.ukdefault.aspx?page=24876
PDP and Employability Activities within the
??? Curriculum
• A ‘spine’ of core modules, providing a clear
framework for engaging students in PDP and in
helping them to think about `graduateness’ and
employability.
• L1:skills module ‘Practising Geography’;
• L2: Residential field course module, application
of skills to the investigation of ‘real world
problems’ in the field;
• L3: ‘capstone’ module ‘Applying Geography’
Reformulating practice
• A place to start… Learning design; assessment; using
technology…
• The tenets of the manifesto… and their implications…
• Identify a curriculum context… traditional semesterlong module, long thin module, overall curriculum
outcomes…
• Explicitly ensure practice – and outcomes – become
explicit to students and can be used by them in
relation to further learning and progression…
Back on the Ranch: the Curriculum Redesign task
1. Identify a curriculum context you have the capacity to influence…
traditional semester-long module, long thin module, overall
curriculum outcomes…
2. Frame your proposed change(s) – whether evolutionary or
revolutionary - making use of appropriate tenets of the manifesto…
and their implications…
3. Explicitly ensure practice – and outcomes – become explicit to
students and can be used by them in relation to further learning and
progression…
4. Send your jottings to rob@recordingachievement.org by 31 May. All
jottings need to be understandable by anyone who does not know
you – or the circumstances you describe (so, like graduates, please
‘write for audience’)!
5. All contributions will be circulated to all attendees (no contribution,
no circulation!)