In my last post, I mentioned my awareness of the fact that I hadn't yet managed to update my CV or write a development plan for the coming years, even though I was due to do it in January. Well, in a fit of enthusiasm (or perhaps boredom - I've been on maternity leave for 3 weeks now, and no baby yet...) I finally spent this morning updating everything.
I actually found the task really enjoyable - as long as I'm in the right frame of mind, I find thinking about my future career goals quite aspirational. It also reminds me that, for the most part, I love what I do!
I began by writing a personal development plan (or PDP) stating what I would like to achieve generally. This included things like increasing my understanding of research support, improving my staff management skills and seeing one of my Chartership mentees successfully Charter. For each goal, I wrote two or three ways in which I hoped to achieve it. All of this is pretty similar to the performance and development review (PDR) I do at work every year, which I could use. However, I like to make this one a bit more personal and include things that I might, sometimes, choose not to mention at work!
Once I had written the PDP I wrote a basic 1-year, 3-year and 5-year action plan. The 1-year plan is a little odd this year because I know I'll be on maternity leave, so the list is relatively short. However, it doesn't mean I can't do things like keep in touch with my team at work and continue to mentor Chartership candidates. From past experience I know that I want to maintain an awareness of what is happening at work and in my general area of expertise - I really missed having so few work links for a full year last time, and don't want to repeat that experience. But my personal situation does mean that, in contrast to previous years, my 3-year and 5-year plans are more in-depth.
The next two tasks were writing a Personal Statement and updating my CV. These two took a bit of work, as my job changed in November, so there was a fair bit to say and update. But it is great to have an up-to-date CV, so I know that, if I need it (not that I have any plans to swap jobs in the near future), it's there and ready to go!
Finally, I even put a little bit of thought into what will need updating next year. I didn't bother to write a review of my previous action plans this year because they were so out-of-date (I will admit that the last time I wrote an action plan was January 2012, when my job was very different. It has taken me a couple of years to get used to life with children, and find time for things like this). However, I plan to write a review next year. As I have also changed the system I use for recording my continuing professional development since revalidating, I will start to include my training logs from January 2015 (when I have some)!
All this did take a while to put together (about 3 hours in total), but I really believe that it is worth the time if you can find a spare morning or afternoon. It really does give you some focus, and it's a great way to figure out what YOU want to achieve in the next few years (rather than your employer/ your husband/ your dog informing you). The great thing is that it's personal to you, so if you don't achieve it or change your mind, it doesn't matter! And even if all you do is update your CV, how much less work is that if/ when you apply for a new job?
Showing posts with label PDP. Show all posts
Showing posts with label PDP. Show all posts
Thursday, 5 February 2015
Sunday, 30 November 2014
2014 Personal development plan update
Back in November 2013 (I can’t believe it was a year ago now, but it was), I reviewed my PDP (Personal Development Plan) to ensure that it was up-to-date. Well, in the last year things have moved on, and the plan needed reviewing again. My first job was to review the 2013 plan and see what I had (or hadn't achieved):
Of the eight goals on the list, I’ve fully achieved five of them, and partially achieved three. The five I’ve fully achieved are listed below:
1) Prepare an updated staff development hour session on open access, research data management the repository
I prepared this with my line manager in preparation for a session in May 2014. Whilst I wasn’t able to help run the May 2014 session, we updated it again for Open Access Week in October 2014, and this session I did run. I was able to learn more about research data management, learn how the newest version (version 5) of Turning Point works, and gain confidence in my ability to both present and discuss open access and research data management in detail with my colleagues.
2) Determine the best referencing managing software to store and organise my references (assess Zotero, Mendeley and RefWorks)
Not longer after I wrote my last PDP, I investigated a range of reference manager tools, and came to the conclusion that RefWorks was my preferred tool. I have been using RefWorks since, although admittedly somewhat sporadically…
3) Understand more about the new CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals) rules and regulations
Reading the new CILIP website, talking to colleagues and attending an online training event have all enabled me to understand the new CILIP rules and regulations in relation to both Chartership and Revalidation. You can see the proof of this in goals four and five…
4) Become a CILIP mentor with 1 or mentees
As of January 2014, I have been a CILIP mentor. I am currently mentoring two Chartership candidates, and hope that at least one of them will successfully Charter in the next six months.
5) Register for Revalidation
I have not just registered for Revalidation, but actually successfully Revalidated (as of November 2014). I’ve written more about my Revalidation experience (albeit before I discovered I was successful) at http://www.annaslibrarythoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/recording-continuing-professional.html.
And the three goals I’ve been a little less successful with:
1) Keeping my cpd23 blog up-to-date
I wasn’t doing too badly with keeping this blog up-to-date. I was trying to write at least one post a month and, on the whole, I was succeeding. Or at least until August of this year I was. Since then I’ve only written one post (in October). This has largely been due to the nature of what’s been happening at work and in my personal life (more about that in a minute).
2) Engaging more with Twitter
I have actually been using Twitter more, but primarily for keeping up-to-date. I read a lot of other people’s post, and have begun to tweet and re-tweet more often – but certainly not once a week. It’s more like once a month on average. Some weeks I go mad and tweet four or five things; other weeks I’m deadly silent.
3) Learning more about research data management
I’ve certainly learnt a fair amount about research data management, both through working with it more closely on a day-to-day basis at work, and through a range of reading I’ve done (for example, reading Graham Pryor’s book Managing Research Data). I’ve also begun the RDMRose training module, but I’m barely half way through. And whilst I have found some other training materials, I haven’t had the time to work through any of them.
So, what next? Well, there are a couple of things affecting what now appears on my updated PDP. Firstly, I have a new job. I’m still working in the same team, but I’m now Research and open Access Librarian, rather than Research Repository Support Librarian (better know as the Repository Manager). Basically it’s a promotion with our Library Research Support Team. So my responsibilities have changed a little - I now have more of a focus on research data and open access generally, and less of an exclusive focus on the research repository.
Secondly, I’m due to go on maternity leave again in January 2015. So whilst there are plenty of things I’d like to do in the next 12 months, I know I need to be fairly realistic about what I’ll actually be able to achieve. Therefore, there are only six things on my PDP this time around – most with timescales somewhere between six and fourteen months away. In some cases, I’m also relying on partnerships with others to achieve the final goal. For example, one goal is to determine how the HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) OA (Open Access) policy affects our current repository workflows, and update these accordingly. Whilst I can advise on our current workflows and whether or not the policy means they need changing, I’m unlikely to be in a position where I can oversee any changes.
I'll aim to come back and review the PDP on this blog next November at the latest - and write related posts about specific goals in the mean time...
Of the eight goals on the list, I’ve fully achieved five of them, and partially achieved three. The five I’ve fully achieved are listed below:
1) Prepare an updated staff development hour session on open access, research data management the repository
I prepared this with my line manager in preparation for a session in May 2014. Whilst I wasn’t able to help run the May 2014 session, we updated it again for Open Access Week in October 2014, and this session I did run. I was able to learn more about research data management, learn how the newest version (version 5) of Turning Point works, and gain confidence in my ability to both present and discuss open access and research data management in detail with my colleagues.
2) Determine the best referencing managing software to store and organise my references (assess Zotero, Mendeley and RefWorks)
Not longer after I wrote my last PDP, I investigated a range of reference manager tools, and came to the conclusion that RefWorks was my preferred tool. I have been using RefWorks since, although admittedly somewhat sporadically…
3) Understand more about the new CILIP (Chartered Institute for Library and Information Professionals) rules and regulations
Reading the new CILIP website, talking to colleagues and attending an online training event have all enabled me to understand the new CILIP rules and regulations in relation to both Chartership and Revalidation. You can see the proof of this in goals four and five…
4) Become a CILIP mentor with 1 or mentees
As of January 2014, I have been a CILIP mentor. I am currently mentoring two Chartership candidates, and hope that at least one of them will successfully Charter in the next six months.
5) Register for Revalidation
I have not just registered for Revalidation, but actually successfully Revalidated (as of November 2014). I’ve written more about my Revalidation experience (albeit before I discovered I was successful) at http://www.annaslibrarythoughts.blogspot.co.uk/2014/10/recording-continuing-professional.html.
And the three goals I’ve been a little less successful with:
1) Keeping my cpd23 blog up-to-date
I wasn’t doing too badly with keeping this blog up-to-date. I was trying to write at least one post a month and, on the whole, I was succeeding. Or at least until August of this year I was. Since then I’ve only written one post (in October). This has largely been due to the nature of what’s been happening at work and in my personal life (more about that in a minute).
2) Engaging more with Twitter
I have actually been using Twitter more, but primarily for keeping up-to-date. I read a lot of other people’s post, and have begun to tweet and re-tweet more often – but certainly not once a week. It’s more like once a month on average. Some weeks I go mad and tweet four or five things; other weeks I’m deadly silent.
3) Learning more about research data management
I’ve certainly learnt a fair amount about research data management, both through working with it more closely on a day-to-day basis at work, and through a range of reading I’ve done (for example, reading Graham Pryor’s book Managing Research Data). I’ve also begun the RDMRose training module, but I’m barely half way through. And whilst I have found some other training materials, I haven’t had the time to work through any of them.
So, what next? Well, there are a couple of things affecting what now appears on my updated PDP. Firstly, I have a new job. I’m still working in the same team, but I’m now Research and open Access Librarian, rather than Research Repository Support Librarian (better know as the Repository Manager). Basically it’s a promotion with our Library Research Support Team. So my responsibilities have changed a little - I now have more of a focus on research data and open access generally, and less of an exclusive focus on the research repository.
Secondly, I’m due to go on maternity leave again in January 2015. So whilst there are plenty of things I’d like to do in the next 12 months, I know I need to be fairly realistic about what I’ll actually be able to achieve. Therefore, there are only six things on my PDP this time around – most with timescales somewhere between six and fourteen months away. In some cases, I’m also relying on partnerships with others to achieve the final goal. For example, one goal is to determine how the HEFCE (Higher Education Funding Council for England) OA (Open Access) policy affects our current repository workflows, and update these accordingly. Whilst I can advise on our current workflows and whether or not the policy means they need changing, I’m unlikely to be in a position where I can oversee any changes.
I'll aim to come back and review the PDP on this blog next November at the latest - and write related posts about specific goals in the mean time...
Monday, 27 October 2014
Recording continuing professional development (CPD) for Revalidation
Having just submitted my application for CILIP Revalidation (after Chartering in 2011), I figured now would be a good time to look at how I record my continuing professional development, and see if I could make any improvements. (Yes, a year ago may have been a better time, and being that I don't know whether or not I've successfully revalidated yet, perhaps I am doing this too late. Either way, hopefully it will help me with either a resubmission or a future Revalidation in a year or so's time).
Having recently read the CILIP Revalidation posts on the Joeyanne Libraryanne blog, I figured these would help to give me some inspiration about what I could improve, and how.
The first stage of revalidating is to record what professional development you have. My current submission includes things like attend conferences, participating in department and university-wide meetings, mentoring, professional reading, visiting libraries in other sectors and getting involved in staff management and recruitment. All of these are valid professional development activities, as are many others.
Jo suggests recording these on a daily, monthly and annual basis. This is where I fall down. I record my activities periodically, but not in any sort of organised manner. This makes it easy to miss activities, or forget what I have gained from them. So, in an attempt to get a little more organised, I have combined some of the advice on Jo's blog with some of the things I already do:
Weekly (every Friday)
I have set up, as suggested, an iDoneThis account. Whilst you can be e-mailed daily from this (you choose a question, then send an e-mail in reply, which gets added to your iDoneThis calendar), I have opted to just be e-mailed once a week, on a Friday afternoon. I only work 3 days a week, so getting a daily e-mail seemed a bit excessive. Whilst I might do development activities every working day some weeks, this is rare - and it's equally like that I won't have done any in my 3 working days during a week. I'm hoping that one e-mail on a Friday afternoon will prompt me to complete the calendar every week with any CPD I have done, but not feel overwhelming.
Monthly (last Friday of the month)
I am better at updating my CPD on something like a more monthly basis. I tend to go through my Outlook calendar, figure out what CPD I have done, and then add it to a Word document, detailing which of the three CILIP assessment criteria it meets. This helps me determine which activities to bother adding to the CILIP VLE as part of my development log. In future, I'm hoping to do something of a combination of what Joeyanne suggests on her blog, and the above. I will aim to:
1) Ensure that my iDoneThis calendar is up-to-date with all my development activities (whether or not I plan to add them to the CILIP VLE)
2) I may continue to add things to a Word document in order to determine which assessment criteria it meets. Not having used iDoneThis properly yet, I don't know whether or not I'll find this necessary. I may skip this step; the point is that I will use this time every month (if I don't end up doing it weekly) to determine which activities I want to add to the CILIP VLE.
3) Add the relevant activities to my CPD log in the CILIP portfolio
Annually
Jo also suggests updating your development plan and profiles (such as your CV and publications page) on a monthly basis. I have to admit, I'm rather more ad-hoc about this. I haven't published much at all, and I tend to have something of an 'it looks good and is relevant to me right now, so I'll do it' approach to development planning. So, for me, the following are more annual activities:
January
1) Update my CV (to be fair, I do need to add a publications section to this) - every Jan
2) Update my development plan (this usually takes the form of a 1-year, 3-year and 5-year plan, and the broad activities I need to carry out to achieve this) - every Jan
September
3) Complete the PKSB (Professional Knowledge and Skills Base). I've actually only done this on an ad-hoc basis in the past, but the new PKSB is actually much easier to use than previous CILIP iterations, and I believe it could be helpful with future development planning
4) Submit Revalidation CPD log and supporting evaluation statement
It may seem odd to split these four activities into two separate sections (one at the beginning of the year, one in the middle), but I know how much time I have, and am fully aware that trying to get them all done at the same time just won't happen. Only having two activities to do at any one time gives me a fighting chance of actually achieving the above.
****
The rest of Joeyanne's blogposts in her CILIP Revalidation Hints and Tips series focus on writing the supporting statement and compiling and submitting your Revalidation. I'm not going to focus on these in this blog post (primarily because I haven't successfully revalidated yet, and the advice Jo gives is perfectly good - I wouldn't have anything extra to add). However, they're great blog posts, and the one on compiling and submitting is especially helpful if you're trying to use the CILIP VLE and feeling a bit lost. I may well be coming back to it as a reference tool in a year or so.
So, the next thing to do is to set up reminders for myself in Outlook so that I know what I should be doing at any one point in time. I'll let you know how I get on!
PS Acronym explanation time:
CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
CPD: Continuing Professional Development
VLE: Virtual Learning Environment
Having recently read the CILIP Revalidation posts on the Joeyanne Libraryanne blog, I figured these would help to give me some inspiration about what I could improve, and how.
The first stage of revalidating is to record what professional development you have. My current submission includes things like attend conferences, participating in department and university-wide meetings, mentoring, professional reading, visiting libraries in other sectors and getting involved in staff management and recruitment. All of these are valid professional development activities, as are many others.
Jo suggests recording these on a daily, monthly and annual basis. This is where I fall down. I record my activities periodically, but not in any sort of organised manner. This makes it easy to miss activities, or forget what I have gained from them. So, in an attempt to get a little more organised, I have combined some of the advice on Jo's blog with some of the things I already do:
Weekly (every Friday)
I have set up, as suggested, an iDoneThis account. Whilst you can be e-mailed daily from this (you choose a question, then send an e-mail in reply, which gets added to your iDoneThis calendar), I have opted to just be e-mailed once a week, on a Friday afternoon. I only work 3 days a week, so getting a daily e-mail seemed a bit excessive. Whilst I might do development activities every working day some weeks, this is rare - and it's equally like that I won't have done any in my 3 working days during a week. I'm hoping that one e-mail on a Friday afternoon will prompt me to complete the calendar every week with any CPD I have done, but not feel overwhelming.
Monthly (last Friday of the month)
I am better at updating my CPD on something like a more monthly basis. I tend to go through my Outlook calendar, figure out what CPD I have done, and then add it to a Word document, detailing which of the three CILIP assessment criteria it meets. This helps me determine which activities to bother adding to the CILIP VLE as part of my development log. In future, I'm hoping to do something of a combination of what Joeyanne suggests on her blog, and the above. I will aim to:
1) Ensure that my iDoneThis calendar is up-to-date with all my development activities (whether or not I plan to add them to the CILIP VLE)
2) I may continue to add things to a Word document in order to determine which assessment criteria it meets. Not having used iDoneThis properly yet, I don't know whether or not I'll find this necessary. I may skip this step; the point is that I will use this time every month (if I don't end up doing it weekly) to determine which activities I want to add to the CILIP VLE.
3) Add the relevant activities to my CPD log in the CILIP portfolio
Annually
Jo also suggests updating your development plan and profiles (such as your CV and publications page) on a monthly basis. I have to admit, I'm rather more ad-hoc about this. I haven't published much at all, and I tend to have something of an 'it looks good and is relevant to me right now, so I'll do it' approach to development planning. So, for me, the following are more annual activities:
January
1) Update my CV (to be fair, I do need to add a publications section to this) - every Jan
2) Update my development plan (this usually takes the form of a 1-year, 3-year and 5-year plan, and the broad activities I need to carry out to achieve this) - every Jan
September
3) Complete the PKSB (Professional Knowledge and Skills Base). I've actually only done this on an ad-hoc basis in the past, but the new PKSB is actually much easier to use than previous CILIP iterations, and I believe it could be helpful with future development planning
4) Submit Revalidation CPD log and supporting evaluation statement
It may seem odd to split these four activities into two separate sections (one at the beginning of the year, one in the middle), but I know how much time I have, and am fully aware that trying to get them all done at the same time just won't happen. Only having two activities to do at any one time gives me a fighting chance of actually achieving the above.
****
The rest of Joeyanne's blogposts in her CILIP Revalidation Hints and Tips series focus on writing the supporting statement and compiling and submitting your Revalidation. I'm not going to focus on these in this blog post (primarily because I haven't successfully revalidated yet, and the advice Jo gives is perfectly good - I wouldn't have anything extra to add). However, they're great blog posts, and the one on compiling and submitting is especially helpful if you're trying to use the CILIP VLE and feeling a bit lost. I may well be coming back to it as a reference tool in a year or so.
So, the next thing to do is to set up reminders for myself in Outlook so that I know what I should be doing at any one point in time. I'll let you know how I get on!
PS Acronym explanation time:
CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
CPD: Continuing Professional Development
VLE: Virtual Learning Environment
Saturday, 1 February 2014
Revalidation
After a couple of months of contemplation, I have finally gotten around to looking into the rules of Revalidation, and how to achieve this according to CILIPs new guidelines. I had been delaying this a bit because I knew that the rules were changing, and I was waiting for the guidelines to be updated enough for me to understand what I needed to do. I was also spurred on to looking at the VLE as I had a meeting with one of my mentees (I now have 2, and a full list - that took all of 2 months) and wanted to have at least a basic understanding of the new CILIP website.
In fairness, I had actually attempted to look at the CILIP VLE just before Christmas. I could get so far, but for some reason couldn't log into the portfolio section - which is where you add details of any CPD you've been doing. I tried again last week, and it worked. I had e-mailed CILIP to ask them to give me access, and the very same day (but after I had managed to log on) I got an e-mail saying they had given me access. Whether this is coincidence or why I was able to log on that day, I guess I'll never know.
So, I guess there are two strands to this. Revalidation itself, and using the VLE.
Let's talk about Revalidation first. CILIP recommend that you revalidate annually, and I Chartered in 2011, so it's time! It all seems relatively simple - and I'm keen to do it at least once before it (probably) becomes compulsory in 2015. Basically, you log 20 hours of CPD on the VLE, and then write a 250 word evaluative statement to say how your CPD corresponds to CILIP's 3 assessment criteria.
I have two main worries with all this. Firstly, I could probably complete 20 hours of CPD in about a month, and I'd like my Revalidation to span a slightly longer timescale than this! You can log more hours of course, but I don't want to get too bogged down. So for the time being I'm cherry picking the bits of CPD that fit best with the assessment criteria, in the hope that it'll cover roughly a 6 month period or so. This includes things like reading a book on research data management, attending planning meetings at work, and being on an interview panel. I also intend to include things like being a mentor. I did think about including some CPD from 2012 (from before I went on maternity leave) but that seems so long ago now that I think I'd find it hard to speak to it. So all the CPD I've picked is from Sept 2013 onwards, when I returned to work. I'm going to aim to submit this summer. My second worry is that 250 words really isn't very many at all for an evaluative statement. I'm going to have to be so succinct!
And so, onto the VLE. Now I've had a go at using it (and been able to log in), I'm a lot less frustrated by it than I was a month ago. It's not particularly intuitive though, so it took some time for me to figure out where I wanted was. Having said that, if you can find the training videos (and they're pretty visible, thankfully) they are incredibly useful, and really will help you to figure out where things are.
So now I just need to get on with actually logging some of those CPD activities...
PS Don't you just love library acronyms?
CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
VLE: Virtual Learning Environment
CPD: Continuing Professional Development
In fairness, I had actually attempted to look at the CILIP VLE just before Christmas. I could get so far, but for some reason couldn't log into the portfolio section - which is where you add details of any CPD you've been doing. I tried again last week, and it worked. I had e-mailed CILIP to ask them to give me access, and the very same day (but after I had managed to log on) I got an e-mail saying they had given me access. Whether this is coincidence or why I was able to log on that day, I guess I'll never know.
So, I guess there are two strands to this. Revalidation itself, and using the VLE.
Let's talk about Revalidation first. CILIP recommend that you revalidate annually, and I Chartered in 2011, so it's time! It all seems relatively simple - and I'm keen to do it at least once before it (probably) becomes compulsory in 2015. Basically, you log 20 hours of CPD on the VLE, and then write a 250 word evaluative statement to say how your CPD corresponds to CILIP's 3 assessment criteria.
I have two main worries with all this. Firstly, I could probably complete 20 hours of CPD in about a month, and I'd like my Revalidation to span a slightly longer timescale than this! You can log more hours of course, but I don't want to get too bogged down. So for the time being I'm cherry picking the bits of CPD that fit best with the assessment criteria, in the hope that it'll cover roughly a 6 month period or so. This includes things like reading a book on research data management, attending planning meetings at work, and being on an interview panel. I also intend to include things like being a mentor. I did think about including some CPD from 2012 (from before I went on maternity leave) but that seems so long ago now that I think I'd find it hard to speak to it. So all the CPD I've picked is from Sept 2013 onwards, when I returned to work. I'm going to aim to submit this summer. My second worry is that 250 words really isn't very many at all for an evaluative statement. I'm going to have to be so succinct!
And so, onto the VLE. Now I've had a go at using it (and been able to log in), I'm a lot less frustrated by it than I was a month ago. It's not particularly intuitive though, so it took some time for me to figure out where I wanted was. Having said that, if you can find the training videos (and they're pretty visible, thankfully) they are incredibly useful, and really will help you to figure out where things are.
So now I just need to get on with actually logging some of those CPD activities...
PS Don't you just love library acronyms?
CILIP: Chartered Institute of Library and Information Professionals
VLE: Virtual Learning Environment
CPD: Continuing Professional Development
Saturday, 23 November 2013
Actually reviewing my personal development plan
A month and a bit after I wrote about it, I have finally got around to reviewing my PDP (for those who don't know, that's a Personal Development Plan). My old one was written in Oct 2011, so the actions were rather out of date.
It hasn't actually taken me too long to come up with a new PDP. Having been back at work for three months now, there are a number of fairly obvious things I need to do to develop myself - not least of which is learn more about research data management (for some reason, this is the thing that springs to mind first - probably because it's the thing I feel I know least about, and the thing that keeps sneaking up on me on my to-do list at work).
Overall, I've managed to come up with eight new PDP goals. Admittedly, three of these are very similar to previous actions, but I believe they are still incredibly valid. And eight goals might see a lot, especially when some have more than one action attached, but I have given myself a year to achieve them all.
I've also already made a start on a couple of the goals - namely learning more about research data management, looking at referencing management software, and keeping this blog up-to-date. But more about each of those separately at a later date, perhaps after I've made a little more headway!
It hasn't actually taken me too long to come up with a new PDP. Having been back at work for three months now, there are a number of fairly obvious things I need to do to develop myself - not least of which is learn more about research data management (for some reason, this is the thing that springs to mind first - probably because it's the thing I feel I know least about, and the thing that keeps sneaking up on me on my to-do list at work).
Overall, I've managed to come up with eight new PDP goals. Admittedly, three of these are very similar to previous actions, but I believe they are still incredibly valid. And eight goals might see a lot, especially when some have more than one action attached, but I have given myself a year to achieve them all.
I've also already made a start on a couple of the goals - namely learning more about research data management, looking at referencing management software, and keeping this blog up-to-date. But more about each of those separately at a later date, perhaps after I've made a little more headway!
Saturday, 19 October 2013
Reviewing my Personal Development Plan
If you've been a reader of this blog for a while, you may remember (if you have a really good memory) a post I wrote back in October 2011, two years ago. It was the final post I wrote as part of the 23 Things course (the reason, in fact, that this blog exists in the first place). In that Oct 2011 post, I talked about a Personal Development Plan (PDP) I had put together, and how and when I hoped to achieve the goals on that PDP.
Then, in December 2011 I wrote a brief update post, stating that I hadn't yet achieved any of those goals - but that according to my timescale, I wasn't yet due to, so that was OK.
A lot has happened since then. Not least of which is the fact that I spent from Aug 2012- Sept 2013 on maternity leave, and didn't really think about work all that much during that period. However, now I've been back at work for a month or two, and I'm starting to think about this sort of thing again. So I've gone back and had a look at that original PDP...
... and was relatively happily surprised. Sure, there are some actions I've totally failed to complete, but others that I've actually completed, and even moved on from a little. Here they are, in order, with how far I've progressed:
1) Prepare a staff development hour session for library staff on open access and the repository using Prezi. Due to complete by Jan 2012.
The preparation for this was actually completed on target, in Jan 2012. However the actual sessions were delivered between Jan and March 2012. I did also write a blog post specifically about this at the time, just after I ran the first session. Things have moved on a little since I created that Prezi, and I suspect I will be creating something similar, but updated, in the not too distant future.
2) Keep my cpd23 blog up-to-date. Review Feb 2012.
I've had partial success here. I was doing relatively well with this up until July 2012, usually managing to post at least once a month, and often more than this. Then I went on maternity leave and the blog died something of a death, there being no posts between August 2012 and Sept 2013. In some ways I feel I have a valid excuse for this (and certainly didn't have enough work-related things to talk about), but now I'm back I'd like to keep the blog going!
3) To engage more with Twitter. Review Feb 2012.
Nope. Utterly failed here. Again, I was doing OK up until July 2012 (although I was posting more like once a month than once a week, which is what I had specified). Since then, I've tweeted once. Apparently that was 117 days and it wasn't even work related. I do still read Twitter posts, so perhaps I need to make more of an effort with this one.
4) Engage more with the LISNPN site. Review Mar 2012.
Sorry, failed again. I haven't actually looked at the LISNPN site in a very long time. This was clearly one of those 'seemed like a good idea at the time' actions which I was, in all honesty, probably never going to do. Perhaps one action to remove, I'm afraid.
5) Create a screencast of uploading an item to the repository using Jing. Due April 2012.
Yes! Something I've done! [And even blogged about a little - although I've just discovered it's still appearing as a draft... I'll update it to make it clear when it was written, then post it after this post and link to it!] Back to the issue at hand: Although the screencast wasn't completed until Aug 2012, and I didn't actually use Jing for it. I used Camtasia as that's the software we have at work, and it does offer a little more functionality than Jing. (Having said that, I did help another collleague use Jing for their screencast).
My colleague and I put together a screencast of uploading an item to the repository back in August 2012. To be fair, this then had to be updated by my colleague after I went on maternity leave becasue we updated the way the UWE Research Repository looks. His work, and the result, can be seen on the UWE Library YouTube channel. But I did show him how to use Camtasia! And we have actually just completed a shorter, one-minute, Quick Deposit guide. When that appears on the YouTube channel I'll probably blog about it...
6) Become a CILIP Mentor. Due May 2012.
Again, achieved. Although very late - and still in its very early stages. I made the decision not to become a mentor before I went on maternity leave, not knowing how much time or effort I'd be able to put in during the year. Looking back, I wish I had become a mentor at the time - it would have been a great way to keep in touch with the profession whilst being away from the workplace, and to give something useful back to people who needed a bit of my time. But then, seeing into the future is tough.
However, I have now sent off the form to CILIP (as of last week), officially stating I want to be a mentor. Whilst this means I don't, as yet, have any official mentees, I do have an informal arrangement in place with a colleague who is studying for their MSc. I've been helping out for a while now, since (I think) early in 2012. And I'm really enjoying being able to help - and hopefully the mentee is gaining something from this relationship too!
7) Use Zotero to store and organise my references. Due June 2012.
Nope. Not even looked at Zotero. I had intended to use this to add any references that might be useful to any Revalidation I chose to do, so it's not actually been much of an issue yet. I haven't read anything that might be valid to Revalidation... and as the criteria are changing now anyway, who knows if I'll need this or not? I have a suspicion it might still be useful though, especially as I'm currently reading Managing Research Data (edited by Graham Pryor), and have a few other books and articles on my reading list...
So, all in all, 4 of 7 actions completed or partially completed. And another one or two which I definitely want to work on. My next action, should, I suspect, be to go away and update my PDP. I can already think of a few additions: Learn more about the new Chartership regulations (I'll need to know these if I'm mentoring Chartership candidates); Register for Revalidation (when I know what the new regulations are, I'm allowed and have done enough CPD hours).
I suspect there'll be an update in the (hopefully not too distant) future...
Then, in December 2011 I wrote a brief update post, stating that I hadn't yet achieved any of those goals - but that according to my timescale, I wasn't yet due to, so that was OK.
A lot has happened since then. Not least of which is the fact that I spent from Aug 2012- Sept 2013 on maternity leave, and didn't really think about work all that much during that period. However, now I've been back at work for a month or two, and I'm starting to think about this sort of thing again. So I've gone back and had a look at that original PDP...
... and was relatively happily surprised. Sure, there are some actions I've totally failed to complete, but others that I've actually completed, and even moved on from a little. Here they are, in order, with how far I've progressed:
1) Prepare a staff development hour session for library staff on open access and the repository using Prezi. Due to complete by Jan 2012.
The preparation for this was actually completed on target, in Jan 2012. However the actual sessions were delivered between Jan and March 2012. I did also write a blog post specifically about this at the time, just after I ran the first session. Things have moved on a little since I created that Prezi, and I suspect I will be creating something similar, but updated, in the not too distant future.
2) Keep my cpd23 blog up-to-date. Review Feb 2012.
I've had partial success here. I was doing relatively well with this up until July 2012, usually managing to post at least once a month, and often more than this. Then I went on maternity leave and the blog died something of a death, there being no posts between August 2012 and Sept 2013. In some ways I feel I have a valid excuse for this (and certainly didn't have enough work-related things to talk about), but now I'm back I'd like to keep the blog going!
3) To engage more with Twitter. Review Feb 2012.
Nope. Utterly failed here. Again, I was doing OK up until July 2012 (although I was posting more like once a month than once a week, which is what I had specified). Since then, I've tweeted once. Apparently that was 117 days and it wasn't even work related. I do still read Twitter posts, so perhaps I need to make more of an effort with this one.
4) Engage more with the LISNPN site. Review Mar 2012.
Sorry, failed again. I haven't actually looked at the LISNPN site in a very long time. This was clearly one of those 'seemed like a good idea at the time' actions which I was, in all honesty, probably never going to do. Perhaps one action to remove, I'm afraid.
5) Create a screencast of uploading an item to the repository using Jing. Due April 2012.
Yes! Something I've done! [And even blogged about a little - although I've just discovered it's still appearing as a draft... I'll update it to make it clear when it was written, then post it after this post and link to it!] Back to the issue at hand: Although the screencast wasn't completed until Aug 2012, and I didn't actually use Jing for it. I used Camtasia as that's the software we have at work, and it does offer a little more functionality than Jing. (Having said that, I did help another collleague use Jing for their screencast).
My colleague and I put together a screencast of uploading an item to the repository back in August 2012. To be fair, this then had to be updated by my colleague after I went on maternity leave becasue we updated the way the UWE Research Repository looks. His work, and the result, can be seen on the UWE Library YouTube channel. But I did show him how to use Camtasia! And we have actually just completed a shorter, one-minute, Quick Deposit guide. When that appears on the YouTube channel I'll probably blog about it...
6) Become a CILIP Mentor. Due May 2012.
Again, achieved. Although very late - and still in its very early stages. I made the decision not to become a mentor before I went on maternity leave, not knowing how much time or effort I'd be able to put in during the year. Looking back, I wish I had become a mentor at the time - it would have been a great way to keep in touch with the profession whilst being away from the workplace, and to give something useful back to people who needed a bit of my time. But then, seeing into the future is tough.
However, I have now sent off the form to CILIP (as of last week), officially stating I want to be a mentor. Whilst this means I don't, as yet, have any official mentees, I do have an informal arrangement in place with a colleague who is studying for their MSc. I've been helping out for a while now, since (I think) early in 2012. And I'm really enjoying being able to help - and hopefully the mentee is gaining something from this relationship too!
7) Use Zotero to store and organise my references. Due June 2012.
Nope. Not even looked at Zotero. I had intended to use this to add any references that might be useful to any Revalidation I chose to do, so it's not actually been much of an issue yet. I haven't read anything that might be valid to Revalidation... and as the criteria are changing now anyway, who knows if I'll need this or not? I have a suspicion it might still be useful though, especially as I'm currently reading Managing Research Data (edited by Graham Pryor), and have a few other books and articles on my reading list...
So, all in all, 4 of 7 actions completed or partially completed. And another one or two which I definitely want to work on. My next action, should, I suspect, be to go away and update my PDP. I can already think of a few additions: Learn more about the new Chartership regulations (I'll need to know these if I'm mentoring Chartership candidates); Register for Revalidation (when I know what the new regulations are, I'm allowed and have done enough CPD hours).
I suspect there'll be an update in the (hopefully not too distant) future...
Thursday, 26 January 2012
Staff development hour on Open Access
At the end of the 23 Things for Professional Development course, I put together a Personal Development Plan (PDP) based on some of the things I'd learnt during the course and had decided I'd like to learn a bit more about. One of the actions was to prepare a staff development hour session for library staff on open access and the repository using Prezi.
Well, today I delivered that session - so I'm pleased to say I've completed one of the goals I set myself! I devised the session with a colleague, and we used a mix of methods to deliver the session. This included some standard PowerPoint slides for basic repository info, a Prezi to show the process researchers go through when writing research (with some great Open Access videos embedded into it), and some quiz sections which we used Turning Point for (a voting system software the uni has), to try and make the whole thing a little more interactive.
It was all a pretty steep learning curve - this was my first "proper" Prezi. Also, although I'd used Turning Point before, this was the first time I'd used it to design the questions and see the process through from beginning to end. However, I was pretty excited about running the session because it was using new techniques (well, new to me), and I was interested to see if people would enjoy it. It was also great that it was a training session for library staff, so there were plenty of friendly faces. That helped a lot when I was being experimental.
I'm happy to say that the overall result was a pretty positive one. Although there was a slight technical hitch with the Prezi initially (it froze and wouldn't load), turning the PC off and back on again fixed that pretty quickly. Plus, it gave people a chance to feel a bit more relaxed and ask some initial questions.
After the session, the feedback indicated that the people who attended really enjoyed the mix of interactivity and talking, and felt that they learnt a lot about what open access was. In fact, the only negative comments were that people would have liked to learn more! Unfortunately, there's only so much you can fit into an hour long session. One other great outcome was that a colleague working on managing research data asked if she could use my research process diagram (the one that appears in the Prezi) for her work. So not only did the whole experience help me learn how to use Prezi and make for a more interesting staff development session, it also directly helped a colleague with her work.
We're booked in to run the session twice more at two different campuses, and I hope my other colleagues are as enthusiastic about, and enjoy the session as much as, my colleagues today.
If you're interested in what I put together, you can view the Prezi part of the presentation above. You might also learn a bit about the research process and how open access can help with it!
Monday, 24 October 2011
23 Things for Professional Development: Thing #23
So, the final Thing. Just reflecting on the course generally, I'm really glad I joined in and gave it a go - some Things took a lot longer than I antipicated, but almost all were useful - I learnt a lot about things I knew nothing about, and a lot more about things I knew a little about. It was also great to learn about those Things that I knew I wanted to investigate, but had never quite got around to doing (reference manager tools and screen capture are two that spring to mind).
I've had a go at putting together a Personal Development Plan (PDP), and I have to say that it almost wrote itself. We use PDPs in our appraisal process anyway, and I'm pretty familiar with them after having to create one for my Chartership portfolio. But having gone through each of the Things, I was pretty clear on where the gaps in my knowledge were, and how I'd like to use some of the Things I had learnt to achieve specific goals. All that remained was to put in some time scales to force me to actually follow through with those actions!
The actions on my PDP vary from very definite actions with an obvious end-goal (prepare a staff development hour session for library staff on open access and the repository using Prezi), to things that do have something to measure their success rate but are more on-going (keep this blog up-to-date), to things that are specific but I have given myself a longer period of time to do (I'm keen to become a mentor for others wanting to charter, but know this needs organisation and training). I plan to complete the 7 goals on my PDP between Jan and June 2012, so I'll be back to blog about them once I succeed! Along with some other blog posts as well, I hope (that would be goal 2 then)...
And finally, my 6-word story: Jumped in, learnt loads, shared loads.
I've had a go at putting together a Personal Development Plan (PDP), and I have to say that it almost wrote itself. We use PDPs in our appraisal process anyway, and I'm pretty familiar with them after having to create one for my Chartership portfolio. But having gone through each of the Things, I was pretty clear on where the gaps in my knowledge were, and how I'd like to use some of the Things I had learnt to achieve specific goals. All that remained was to put in some time scales to force me to actually follow through with those actions!
The actions on my PDP vary from very definite actions with an obvious end-goal (prepare a staff development hour session for library staff on open access and the repository using Prezi), to things that do have something to measure their success rate but are more on-going (keep this blog up-to-date), to things that are specific but I have given myself a longer period of time to do (I'm keen to become a mentor for others wanting to charter, but know this needs organisation and training). I plan to complete the 7 goals on my PDP between Jan and June 2012, so I'll be back to blog about them once I succeed! Along with some other blog posts as well, I hope (that would be goal 2 then)...
And finally, my 6-word story: Jumped in, learnt loads, shared loads.
Subscribe to:
Posts (Atom)