Tools
Supporting your Personal Development Planning (PDP)
This area of the website is the place to find exercises, questionnaires and other materials to get you active in your development towards ‘graduating in 3D!’
These tools are also known as PDP (personal development planning) exercises, as they provide you with the opportunity to build a record of your learning experiences, achievements and personal reflections. The aim is to develop your capacity to understand not just what you are learning but how you are learning, so that you can reflect on your successes (and failures) and understand how you tick.
You should try and save the exercises that you complete. That way you have them to refer to when you leave, to help you write CV’s, preparing for job-interviews and moving into the world beyond Goldsmiths. How do they work? The exercises are divided into 3 different areas. If you are an undergraduate it may work for you to work through one area per year. Any student can use any of the tools at any time though, and we hope that they will all be of use to you at some stage in your development. The three areas are:
- Understanding Yourself This area can help you become a more independent and reflective student. These are the most important exercises on the website, as they are ones to help you get a better understanding of the how you learn and how to improve your performance. These are also the sort of exercises being increasingly encouraged in the workplace so it makes sense for you to get to grips with them sooner rather than later. We hope that from working through these tool you will come out with 4 or 5 action plans and the action steps you are going to take in your development.
- Transforming Yourself Once you have started to develop your reflective and planning skills, these tools will help you make the most of your time at Goldsmiths and have a full, multi-dimensional, university experience. They aim to focus your goals, to get you thinking about what you want from your studies, and ultimately, to think about what career you might want. Exercises here include those around decision making, networking and career planning.
- Furthering Yourself Hopefully by the time you start looking at this section you will be well down the road of being a reflective and autonomous learner. These tools help with some of the more specific, and difficult things, you will have to face in order to move to life beyond Goldsmiths, such as how to complete a CV, prepare for a job interview or start your own business.
Some departments have developed materials of their own (such as for research students and PGCE students. You’ll find these in the 3D for departments section.