Academic Leadership: Fundamental Building Blocks
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Setting up Your Development Plan
Development plans are a document, drawn up by yourself, perhaps with some input from
your peer coach, which specifies what you want to learn or develop. The development
plan also specifies how this learning will be accomplished and within what period of time.
The development plan also stipulates the criteria that will be applied to measure
success.
The process is as follows:
- Diagnose learning needs:
What is it that you want to learn or develop? Where are there noticeable gaps in
your professional competency? What have you learned from the 360° feedback
that is of interest? What don’t you understand? How can you apply some of your
learnings to work? What difficulties are you experiencing at work? These are a
few areas where you may be able to identify learning needs.
- Formulate learning objectives: State what you want to learn. Your objectives
should be ‘SMART’: Specific, Measurable, Achievable, Realistic, and have a Time
limit for achievement.
- Identify human and material resources for learning: What human and material
resources will you need to accomplish your development plan? Who will you need
to meet with? What books might you need? Are there additional training
requirements? Is there specific equipment you must acquire?
- Choose and implement appropriate learning strategies:
Once you have identified the necessary learning resources, how are you going to
use them strategically? How will you involve other specialists? How will you
practice? What documents will you produce?
- Evaluate learning outcomes – who and how?
Who is going to be involved in the evaluation of your development plan? In other
words, what is the feedback process? How will you know that you have achieved
the outcomes you have set for yourself? In most cases you will get this feedback
from your peer coach.
However, are there other individuals you might like to involve to assist you in your
development? What will their role be in the evaluation?
- Specifying the criteria for evaluation:
How will you, your peer coach, and other mentors know that you have achieved
the targets in your development plan? What are the measurable criteria that tell
you and others that you have met your objectives?
The next section provides you with an example learning objective. Use this framework to
help you set up your own learning objectives.
Development Plan 1
In my role as Academic Coordinator I will implement at least 4 new team building skills
that should lead to positive changes in my course team with respect to collaboration and
support, within the next 2 months.
