Tools for career & educational planning and evaluating my.pPlan

[jago_brown]

Dear Instructional Designers and others interested in this area,

Career and educational planning is often referred to in English (UK) Higher Education as PDP – Personal Development Planning.  And institutions find different tools, practices and approaches to support students with this planning, thinking and strategizing. An out-of-the-box online tool I felt was not available on https://www.eduappcenter.com  (?) to students or intuitions was one that:

1. provides a structure to support the planning process and conversation with assigned mentors/coaches
2. providing a structure that facilitates a more organic visual (planning - Kanban board like) way of thinking and planning - where inline feedback can be given at different points in the process
3. Makes use of SMART criteria https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/SMART_criteria to help the student think in an objective way (Note Action-steps replace Assignable/Achieveble)
4. Allows the breakdown of each broad goal into many SMART plans (i.e. a system that supports many to many relationships)
5. a lower cost tool (than say an ePortolio which may have to store and manage many digital assists for long periods)

To start exploring a tool that would provide these features I’ve built an online prototype anyone can currently Sign into, so feedback from this community would be very useful. Below is link to a survey and more information on the tool:

The tool: https://my.pplan.xyz 
Survey: https://goo.gl/forms/uozgRwr8Ja0ZfT8t1 
Quick overview of tool/backend post: https://goo.gl/3kRH3M  
How to use the tool: https://goo.gl/CNTZwT  
Step-by-step user guidance: https://jago.active-studio.com/pplan-user-guide/ 

Note, this prototype is not an LTI tool provider (yet), but it was to LTI tools that we initially looked to provide these kinds of features at my college.

Jago Brown

[Stef_retired]

What an exciting project,  @jago_brown ! People who are interested in looking at solutions for personal development and mentoring might also want to have a look at Bridge Perform specifically and the resources in the Bridge Community overall.

[jago_brown]

Thanks stefaniesanders‌.  So Bridge is like a port of the LMS to the business world? Accomodating these but without being an ePortfolio?

I suppose pPlan might be though of as a very minimalistic ePortfolio in the sense that you create artefacts on a Board and return later to edit plans and reflect and receive inline feedback on the artefacts.  And that from 8 areas shown above, pPlan is most concerned with PDP (Personal Development Planning) and Employability

... and I am also interested in career exploration and decisions which the http://www.actprofile.org/ (beta) approached in a statistical way fairly comprehensively... pPlan is trying to capture and support ongoing conversations

Although the pPlan prototype attempts to capture the minimum “background” information a mentor might need from a student by including a “Current Situation” description and a Values inventory, from feedback on the tool already received, it is clear the chief selling point is the structure provided to the student and mentor to model the thinking and planning process for future events - and receive inline feedback. For example, this overarching student planning board encompasses achieving course success and career planning:

https://my.pplan.xyz/board/grid-mapped-view/14/

This board is more focused only supporting the internship placement:

https://my.pplan.xyz/board/grid-mapped-view/5/

NOTE: these are “view only” links – you need to setup a pPlan account to use tool

So, there still is flexibility in how the tool is used

Jago

[jago_brown]

Project update:

the project as developed and now includes surveys / psychological instruments  - to support self awareness/reflection and to help coaches better understand the student asap

https://pplan-prototype1b.herokuapp.com/