developing themselves further. The model of PDP practice is employment though academic skills
and forms part of the portfolio of skills and competences required for employability. JSG has the
potential to be used as an ePortfolio as the tool developers are collaborating with the Bucks
Careers & Employment team. Students enjoy using this tool to build their CVs that match potential
employment as there is a facility to identify their individual skills levels and identify skills for jobs.
They like it’s “whenever and wherever” accessibility and see their development as they build their
CVs. It gives them a “sense of direction and growth”.
PDP for Psychology using Google Sites
The course team have been working towards the inclusion of PDP within the programme and have
developed a proforma using the learning outcomes from the modules as a starting point using
Google sites for their e-portfolio. As the programme is a traditional academic discipline and thus
concurring with the work of Clegg & Bradley (2006) is based on the academic model, the proforma
were therefore developed along these lines. The students saw this as an added extra and that time
would be required for reflection and write up, their focus and work effort was on their studies and
assignments at this point in their first year and not on employability and personal development,
which links to the notion “let me learn to be a student before you want me to learn to be an
employee”. Opportunities to reflect on skills required for or learnt from part-time and voluntary work
were given and such discussions improved the motivation and engagement of the students. Further
work is now needed in this area through curriculum development to integrate or embed PDP
throughout the programme and introduce the ePortfolio tool at an appropriate point to enhance the
student learning experience at Bucks and beyond.
Discussion
The outcome of this study identified two key areas of development and these were based around
the purpose of PDP and the process of PDP evidenced in an ePortfolio.
Purpose
Students need to be clear about what PDP means, why they need to do it and how they should do
it. Is the purpose for formative or summative assessment? The former, is about assessing for
learning and the latter assessing the outcome. All the cases in this study use formative assessment
where a scaffold process with dialogical feedback from tutors is crucial.
Knowledge and graduate skills required to be employable should be made explicit within the
ePortfolio with opportunities for planning for developing them reflecting the PDP process. The
purpose could be the same for all programmes and disciplines, for example CPD