The links and materials in this section relate to ways of supporting tutees in action planning and ensuring that they leave tutorials with a clear agenda and set of targets.

Action planning is the activity most closely associated in many people’s minds with the personal development planning (PDP) initiative in UK higher education. Yet skills in action planning have arguably received less attention in educational literature than reflective skills. And while the two sets of skills are connected within the concept of PDP, there seems little reason to suppose that they are connected in a student’s learning. People in general can be very good at analysing their experience and very bad at planning their future actions!

Simple guidance to make planning more effective can be expressed as an acronym: the instruction to set SMART targets encompasses the good advice that targets should be:

Specific

Measurable

Achievable

Relevant and

Time-limited. 

The Assignment Survival Kit is a simple online tool developed at the Universities of Kent and Staffordshire, which students can use for planning any kind of assignment.

More simple tools for students to use in planning their time effectively can be found on the Learnhigher website under the Time Management section.

The videoclip below shows the tutor directing a fairly disorganised student towards such tools before the tutorial is ended. 

Scenario 2: An underperforming student?

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