Templates and resources for personal development
Successful personal and professional development is dependent on it being user-friendly and easy to apply. The range of learning approaches is vast, with activities covering the whole spectrum of learning from on-the-job development, formal programmes and qualifications to informal opportunities and learning through experience.
Gentleman Jack © BBC One
Your personal development plan
Your personal development plan should include:
- clear time periods for your goals
- where do you want to be at the end of this time period?
- what do you want to be doing at the end of this time period?
- what do you want/need to learn and why?
- what will you do to achieve this?
- what resources and support will you need?
- what will success look like for you?
- target dates for the review and completion of your development goals
Your CPD learning log
Recording the nature of a piece of continuing professional development training helps cement that learning, and gives you a portfolio of evidence of your learning for future employers. Your CPD learning can be recorded in different ways, but one way is via a learning log. A good learning log should include:
- dates of training or intervention
- activity and type of learning, i.e. what you did
- evidence, i.e. how was it recorded
- learning outcomes, i.e. what you learnt
- links to competences demonstrated by this learning, i.e. how you put it into practice
- time and duration of the training, e.g. in hours or days
- next steps: further learning needed or planned
- plans for implementation of the learning in your professional life
- evaluation: how helpful was the learning to achieving your goal
- how could the learning activity be improved?