Personal Development Planning for Cross-Institutional Lifelong Learning
PDP4XL2 supports the use of personal development planning and e-portfolios to develop and sustain favourable learner attitudes towards lifelong learning in the creative industries and health care sectors. Project partners will evaluate the ioPortal, the lifelong learning portal developed by Phosphorix, and map its data structures for PDP records against those in their institutional VLEs/e-portfolios that support PDP. The project builds on the strengths and successful outcomes of PDP4Life, the regional e-learning pilot for the South West.
Aims and objectives
The overall aim of the project is to encourage successful lifelong learning by developing a positive attitude towards personal development planning (PDP) on the part of learners, academic staff, employers and professional organisations, together with a willingness to use technology in the PDP process to generate the transferable records that support lifelong learning. Specific aims are to:
- continue to embed PDP and e-portfolio use within the creative industries academic setting in the SW, with specific reference to the use of employer feedback to inform PDP tools and processes
- explore attitudes to and engagement with PDP and e-portfolios for lifelong learning by health care professionals in both academic and practice settings in the SW region
- inform, and be informed by, approaches to PDP and e-portfolios used to support the information, advice and guidance (IAG) processes of the South West Lifelong Learning Network (SWLLN)
- contribute to the knowledge base on interoperability of learner records and data transfer across institutional boundaries in support of lifelong learning
Project methodology
Attitudes to PDP and lifelong learning
Project staff will meet with learners and employers to identify their attitudes to and usage of PDP and e-portfolios, including ioPortal. The learners will include students on undergraduate programmes, those undertaking CPD programmes or workplace learning in practice and non-traditional learners seeking guidance on learning opportunities from the SW Lifelong Learning Network. The employers will be from the creative industries and health sectors.
Technical developments
The PDP process tool in ioPortal will be evaluated with learners as above, and adjustments made if appropriate. The possibility of transferring PDP learner records between ioPortal and pebblePad and between ioPortal and other managed/virtual learning environments used by partners will be explored. These M/VLEs are likely to be Blackboard, Moodle and e2train.
Anticipated impact
The project will help institutions meet the needs of diverse learners by using case studies to disseminate a more informed understanding of PDP in two specific vocational areas, the creative industries (CI) and health care. CI learners are frequently highly skilled in the use of IT, but they have requirements for portfolio building that challenge the concept of the lifelong learner record and specifications for e-portfolios. Learners in the health sector may traditionally be less accustomed to using IT but have a professional requirement to maintain their CPD profile, so the transfer of their records and the associated PDP processes into an online environment also presents interesting challenges. In both cases, understanding learner and employer perceptions will be important in informing the development of tools to assist e-PDP and e-portfolio building, whether these are individual applications/tools or elements of a larger virtual learning environment.
The evaluation of the ioPortal and its potential for providing a non-institutional lifelong learning space will be evaluated. The feasibility of transferring PDP data between institutions’ virtual learning environments and a non-institutional e-portfolio will be tested.
Lead institution
Bournemouth University Academic Services
Project partners
Project Staff
Project Director
Janet Hanson (Head of Academic Services) Bournemouth University, Talbot Campus, Fern Barrow, Poole, BH12 5BB
Tel: 01202 965044 Fax: 01202 965475
jhanson@bournemouth.ac.uk
Project Advisers