Digital Awareness and Professional Development

Unit Learning Outcomes Assessed.

1.      Identify their personal and professional skills and their social media digital footprint (SMDF)

2.      Construct and present strategies for the development of their personal and professional skills and the management of their SMDF.

3.      Apply reflective practice to their digital awareness, and their personal and professional development

The assessment gives you the opportunity to produce a personal narrative reflecting your own strengths, experiences values, aspirations and skills development and understand the impact of your own professional social media footprint.

Assignment:

Your task is to develop a portfolio – this must be presented as a portfolio in electronic form.  The portfolio MUST include a CV, and evidence that you have reflected on unrealised strengths and set objectives for developing those strengths and identified and developed your social media footprint.  Your portfolio will enable you to identify, and evidence, your developing strengths for your next level of study and your future career, and will be based on identifying your current position and reflecting on the next steps and actionable points. You MUST include evidence of considerable engagement with the PPD process and demonstrate areas of development and developments in your professional social media footprint.

In your portfolio you should:

1.      Demonstrate how you have used your experience to learn about yourself during your first year at university and the contributions and implications of this learning for your future professional development and career choices

2.      Clearly identify your personal strengths and areas that you need to develop in relation to your degree programme, your professional development, social media footprint and the expectations of potential employers.

3.      Clearly identify appropriate actions that you should take to enhance your unrealised strengths in relation to your university journey as an early career professional and your future career path

One way of doing this is to use for the five-step process for PDP planning as set out below:

1. Identification of unrealised strengths
2. Goal setting
3. Action planning
4. Implementation / action (you will discuss how you will implement or action this)
5. Review/ reflection

You should produce you portfolio in electronic form via a program such as Word, PowerPoint, or Pages, and converted to PDF format, you must show you have engaged with the learning materials (20%). It MUST include:

• Personal Profile – (15%) this brief personal profile gives us a snapshot of you: your skills, attributes, values, experience, aspirations and personality. It should conclude with a brief identification of your planned career path or your ideal job (around 400 words).

• Social Media Footprint (20%)– Show an understanding of your digital footprint through an evaluation of your professional social media and digital footprint. Reflect upon how you have implemented and developed your e-professionalism such as development and utilisation of LinkedIn Profile, introduction or increase of privacy. (around 500-600 words)

• Critical reflection on strengths questionnaire (20%) what strengths did the questionnaire reveal, how accurate and why. What other ‘unrealised strengths’ resonate, and why. (around 600-700 words in total)

• Brief action plan for next year (10%)– this will outline how you intend to achieve your Goals, with particular reference to developing your unrealised strengths. If you choose new goal(s), a brief justification of these and an action plan is required (around 200-300 words)

• C.V. & Linkedin Profile (15%)– CV- up-to-date to reflect the skills and experiences you have gained during your first year at university.  The summary / profile should  contain reference to strengths link to opportunities to develop unrealised strengths. This should follow a standard MMU format, either from the Career Hub’s Employability service or from the Placement service. (no word limit or count restriction in this section, maximum of two A4 pages in length anything over 2 pages will not be marked). The Linkedin profile should be as complete as possible, and up-to-date. It should contain a picture, a profile which discusses strengths and opportunities to develop unrealised strengths, a summary of education / work / voluntary experience, it should list skills and strengths, evidence of building connections and a network, engagement with relevant groups, engagement with Business related content, engagement with interests.

The word limits are approximate and are intended as guidance.  It is expected that as a minimum you should submit 1700 words (not including your C.V). The length of the submission has been specified to allow concise but sufficiently detailed submission.  Any submission which is longer than the indicated 2000 words is likely to receive a reduced mark on the grounds of ineffective communication. Any submission which is shorter is likely to receive a reduced mark on the grounds of insufficient detail.

Detail on how to structure these sections will be covered in the unit sessions.

SUBMISSION GUIDANCE

Format:

·         Use an appropriate medium to showcase your work (Word, PowerPoint, Pages, Keynote)

·         Use of MMU Harvard Referencing is essential (A PDF guide link is on Moodle)

·         Use headings and sub-headings to structure your assignment

·         Use images and pictures if appropriate.

·         The portfolio must be convert to, and submitted in, PDF format

You will need to upload your PDF to the Turnitin link provided on the unit Moodle site.

Your deadline for submission will be under the assessment area of Moodle

You will receive marks and feedback on your assessment four weeks after the final deadline, as shown on the Moodle site.

ADDITIONAL INFORMATION

What you MUST do:

·         Use MMU Harvard Referencing appropriately and in full, both in the text as citations and listed in full, alphabetically, at the end in a References section

·         Use grammatically correct formal English.

·         Proof read your work

·         Attend supporting tutorials and engage with all material on Moodle

·         You must discuss your goals with your class Tutor (this will ensure they are appropriate)

·         You must use your own words

·         You must read this assignment brief!

·         You must use British English, not US English.

What you MUST NOT do:

·         Do not use Wikipedia or other inappropriate web sites as reference material

·         Do not leave portfolio completion until the last day

·         Do not submit late – see the Late Submission section for details.

LATE SUBMISSION

If your submission is after the deadline but within five days of it, your mark will be capped at 40%.  You will then be offered the opportunity to re-submit at the next assessment opportunity as determined by the Assessment Board.

Please Note: your Tutor cannot grant extensions.  If you think you are unable to submit on time due to a health or some other unforeseen issue you must contact the Student Hub and apply through formal channels for Exceptional Factors.

1. The assessment tests your written communication skills, and ability to produce a professional and personal narrative of your journey.  The portfolio also tests your understanding of the importance of recording and reflecting upon your skills, goals and achievements in a structured way.  Both elements require you to show evidence of how the skills you have learned are transferable, how you used them in different contexts and how you intend to do so in future. This is an exercise that helps you to prepare for future job applications and career decisions.

1. It also tests your ability to identify and review your personal strengths as well as aspects that need to be developed. Therefore, you should highlight the skills, competencies and attributes that you already have and the areas that need to be developed in relation to your degree programme, your professional development and the expectations of potential employers.

1. A key element of your university-level thinking and your subsequent working life is the ability to reflect on your experience and knowledge, and use that to make improvements. Therefore, the assignment tests your ability to develop critical thinking skills and improve on future performance by analysing your experience.  This will, in turn, test your understanding, knowledge, and capacity to structure information.

A Good Critical Reflection…

• means that you stand back from yourself – think more deeply about your successes, challenges and problems this year. You can think about your motivations, choices you have made, your behaviour and responses, feelings and performances.  In other words, think more deeply about the who and why, how you got to this point, what can you learn from it and what you can do next.
• helps you to learn from your personal experiences.  Look back on this year with the aim to improve your performance in future years.
• Helps you to write a good reflection. It may help you in you think in terms of these expressions – ‘If only I had known what I know now…’ or ‘with hindsight, I realise…’ on different sources

·         draws on different academic and professional sources in order to develop your own thinking.  You will be expected to reference a minimum of three sources for this piece of work using MMU Harvard Referencing.

Portfolio Feedback

You will receive feedback on your submitted work that covers your ability to be critical of information to support your argument, and how you have analysed it in context of your own development. You will also receive written commentary on the academic and professional skills you have further enhanced and developed.

Early Career Professional Skills (PLOs) being assessed or developed/assessed.

This assessment will help you to develop a set of key skills needed by all professionals:

1.      Self-awareness – of your own personality, aptitudes, skills and personal development needs

2.      Critical Thinking – the ability to identify what you need to improve and to construct, carry out and reflect on a Personal Development Plan to achieve this

3.      Demonstrating Values – the ability to identify your personal values and to represent this when you present yourself professionally

4.      Communication Skills – the ability to communicate about yourself and your skills professionally and effectively; and to use a creative digital medium to do this

5.      Professionalism – the ability to develop employability skills.

Intellectual skills

At the end of this unit, you should be able to:

·         identify your personal strengths and weaknesses in relation to your personal development and your degree programme and the expectations of potential employers

·         work independently and in groups

·         identify appropriate actions you should take to enhance your personal qualities and competences in relation to your life and your future career.

Relevant practical skills

At the end of this unit, you will have improved your ability to study effectively and efficiently at undergraduate level.

Transferable skills

At the end of this unit, you will be able to:

·         Interpret material in an original and evaluative way

·         Synthesise to form links between concepts and theories producing coherent arguments

·         Use a variety of information sources in their research and learning activities

·         Keep effective records of their learning and progress towards personal, academic and career goals.

Communication skills

At the end of this unit, you will be able to:

•          Plan, organise and structure work that is coherent, fluent and grammatically accurate

•          Develop fluency in verbal and written reasoning

•          Write effectively using academic and business conventions.

Resources

All resources needed for the assessment cab found on the unit Moodle site.

Assessment Attainment Bands

Please see below for the marking criteria setting out what is expected for each level of the assessment.  Marks will be allocated accordingly.

In line with University guidance, this unit will use STEP marking. Step marking means using a restricted number of marks within the range of 0-100%. All marks would end in 2, 5 or 8 (e.g. 52%, 45%, 88% – the only possible exceptions would be 0% and 100%). The use of step marking shows the extent to which the piece of work meets a specific criterion within a grade range (e.g. 50-59%) The template marking system is detailed after the assessment criteria below.

Course Unit Specification

Course Unit Details and Outline

Course Unit Description

Learning Outcomes

Summative Assessment

Please list the components of assessments in expected order of submission.

Learning Activities

Learning Resources

The information required in this section can either be typed in in the table below, or a download version of the information from the relevant Talis Aspire area can be appended to this paper version of the unit specification.

Additional Comments

Please indicate below if there is any additional information not captured above, e.g. specific co-taught information, etc.

Very poor Fail (No)

Clear Fail

(Little/poor)

Marginal Fail

(inadequate/

limited)

Third

(Adequate/

acceptable)

2.2

(Good)

2.1

(Very good)

First

(Excellent)

Outstanding

(20%)

(15%)

awareness of key personal skills, values and aspirations

(15%)

(20%)

the PPD process, the learning experience and enhancing your critical reflection.

(20%)

The digital footprint and e-professionalism, the learning experience and enhancing your critical reflection.

(10%)