Take 10 institutions with diverse missions, student types, staff experience, programmes, curricular structures, strategies, funding models, and a geographical location across the length and breadth of Scotland.  Add a common desire to transform the experience of their students through innovative approaches to teaching and learning and you get the Individualised Support for Learning through e-Portfolios (ISLE) Project! The project was funded under the Scottish Funding Council’s e-Learning Transformation Programme to look at how a shared model of Personal Development Planning (PDP) supported by ePortfolios can benefit the learning process.

We aimed to build foundations for transforming staff perceptions of PDP and a sustainable future for a culture of strong staff commitment combined with a genuine conviction that it (PDP) is a worthwhile process for students to take part in. Additionally, we aimed to develop and embed a shared concept of PDP flexibly supported through integrated blended learning strategies and to utilise an e-portfolio model to develop empowered strategies in students for their own self-development in the future.   We also had a shared perception that traditional approaches to teaching, assessment and facilitation of learning are labour-intensive, duplicate support and often poorly co-ordinated, resulting in both reduced effectiveness and increased direct and indirect costs to the sector and the wider economy. They are also not flexible enough to cope with the changing and diverse needs of students with respect to their learning behaviours.

The PDP definition adopted by the project (and one shared almost universally across tertiary education in the UK was ‘a structured and supported process undertaken by an individual to reflect upon their own learning and/or achievement and to plan for their personal, education and career development’ (Universities UK 2002).

There are a number of key phrases in this definition. PDP although routed in the personal is also a structured and supported experience. Structured in the sense that there is a series of activities that students can follow. Supported both in terms of staff encouragement and systems to help facilitate the activity. In the ISLE project, the ePortfolio forms a major plank of the structure and support. It is a process undertaken by the individual and as such the realising of benefits depends ultimately on the level of student engagement. The three domains of personal, education and career are core to the definition but also to the ISLE approach which is largely drawn from the Effective Learning Framework (a working group of SACCA and Universities Scotland, chaired by the ISLE Project Director) 

By far the most important outcome of the project has been the participants accepting that PDP is a process much more so than it is a product.

Dr David A Ross

Director of CAPD, University of Paisley

and Project Director for ISLE