Assessment and Feedback Policy for Personal Development Coursework

This module follows the principles of the University’s Assessment & Feedback Policy, developed in conjunction with the Student Union, to ensure good practice and transparency in assessment and feedback processes.

Coursework (100%)

The Aim of the Coursework assignments is to enable you to produce your own Action Plan for your Personal Development and then execute it during the time of your studies. To do this, you will need to build a Portfolio of Evidence of your development and actively engage in Continuous Professional Development (CPD) including demonstrating your reflective practice as part of your CPD.

There are TWO elements of COURSEWORK.

THE FIRST ELEMENT: This requires you to reflect on your personal and skills development and produce an Action Plan for the year. You should use the activities from the workshops provided by this module and from other sources that you have identified to prepare you for this task.

At a 10-15 minute individual Viva interview with your tutor: The viva is on-line. The discussion will be based around the 3 papers you need to submit as a part of this assessment. The 3 papers are outlined below.

Paper 1: Personal SWOT analysis (Strengths, Weaknesses, Opportunities, Threats).  This self –appraisal must include self-evaluation arising out of reflections on at least 3 of the following:

1. Group working skills
2. Career management skills
3. Critical thinking skills
4. Presentation Skills
5. Leadership skills – Influencing & Persuasion, Decision-making

N.B. At the time of the viva MSc students are advised to focus on the three topics they have covered in class. For MSc students this is likely to be the first three. For MA students this is likely to be 1,3,4.

It will also be informed by reflecting on your MBTI profile. Your tutor may ask why you to justify some of this self-analysis and so you need to be able to point to some evidence or experience to justify why something is a strength or weakness

Paper 2; An example of a Critical Incident Reflection

Paper 3; Your Personal Action Plan for 2021-22 identifying your key goals and how you will achieve them

This is a written assignment, which is to be presented as a ”portfolio” with appropriate appendices. Within the Portfolio, you should include:

- Curriculum Vitae (CV)

- Your Reflective diary or Critical Incident logs evidencing regular active reflections. Many of these reflections may be in text form but some reflections can be in images, mind-maps, diagram formats as well, if this is your preferred type of representation. It is recommended that you include at least 3 but no more than 5 Critical Incidents within the Portfolio and that the Critical Incidents should be no longer that 1.5 pages long - single spaced.

Assessment criteria

A Reflective statement about your development, which will also relate to your original action plan and will also acknowledge feedback from others: tutors and peers. The wordcount for the Reflective Statement is 2,500 word. The reflective statement is a review of your learning and development and should include

1. A brief introduction of yourself in terms of your personal and professional development since joining Oxford Brookes and future ambitions
2. An overview of your personal development including, where appropriate, amendments and revisions to your goals as identified in the original Action Plan. You will be referring in your Reflective Statement to your Reflective diary or Critical Incidence logs and so to the learning and development experiences you have as part of your development – workshops, readings, activities, self-evaluation questionnaires etc. In particular, you MUST include reflections on:

Group working skills

1. Presentation skills
2. Critical thinking skills
3. Career management skills
4. Leadership skills – Influencing & Persuasion, Decision-making
5. A future –orientated action plan that includes three objectives for further self-development and/or career management also needs to be included as an appendix following your 2,500 word REFLECTIVE STATEMENT.

N.B. Any discussion around the execution of the action plan is included within the 2,500 word count. The action plan template itself should be 1-2 pages and is NOT included in the word count.

Your statement needs to be critically self-evaluative in analysing your self-development during your programme of study. Your self-analysis will also be strengthened by reflecting on & applying a select number of academic/ self-development / leadership theories to your development experience.

Please note for CIPD MSc and PA/ PgDip Human Resource Management students ONLY: There are some additional elements which need to be included within the Portfolio which relate to the Skills Workshops within the MSc HRM Programme. You will be advised separately about these.

Assessment criteria

The Assessment Criteria for Coursework Element One: (20%)

- Self-evaluation (SWOT) (20%)

- Reflection (40%)

- Action Planning (40%)

The Assessment Criteria for Coursework Element Two: (80%)

- Reflection (30%)

- Critical Self-evaluation (30%)

- Evidence of actions taken in supporting Personal & Professional development (25%)

- Presentation of Portfolio including key documents (15%)

See the Assessment Matrices and grade descriptors in Course feedback Sheets.

Module Specific Assessment Regulations.

The word limit for the Reflective Statement is 2,500 words.

The Documents needs to be Word-processed in Arial font, 11 pitch and double-spaced. Margins must be as follows: Top; 1.0 inch (2.5cm), Bottom; 1.0 inch (2.5 cm), Left; 1.25 inches (3.2 cm), Right; 1.25 inches (3.2 cm). All pages must be numbered. The assignment must have a front cover showing the programme title, module name and number, title of the assignment, and submission date.

Words that exceed the maximum allowed will not be marked. If in doubt, you should discuss this with the Module Leader before submission. 

A student who attempts an element of assessment and achieves less than or 50%  in that element of assessment, will be permitted one opportunity to resit the failed element, unless their performance on other elements of assessment within the module means they have passed the module overall. 

You are not required to pass each assessment element at 50% but you must achieve an overall aggregate mark of 50% or above across both elements of assessment to successfully pass this Module.

Module Specific Assessment Regulations.

Please note that if you are applying for a grace period, you need to access your on-line portal. Students must register that they are using the grace period using the online portal in order to be considered to have made an attempt at the assessment, but are not required to provide any supporting evidence.

Once you pass an assessment, you cannot resit it, and once you pass a module, you cannot retake it.

Hand In Dates and Instructions.

MSc students

You will be advised of your individual Viva time and date. These will be scheduled between week 8 and 12 of semester 1. Individual viva times will be confirmed. Your deadline for submitting your written documents should be Monday 8th November 2021 week 8 by 13:00. Please note all vivas will be online.

The SECOND element is the PORTFOLIO; The Submission date for the Action Plan is End of Week 11, Semester Two, Friday 8th April 2022 at 13.00.

N.B.If you have extensions as part of an Inclusive Support Plan (ISP), you can submit your work one, two or three weeks later in line with your ISP allowance.

MA / Pg Dip HRM students

You will be advised of your individual Viva time. The date of the Viva’s is Tuesday 23rd November 2020 (Individual times to be confirmed). Note you also need to submit your documents by Moodle by Monday 22nd November 2021 by 10:00hrs. Please note all Viva’s will be conducted on-line.

N.B. If you have extensions as part of an Inclusive Support Plan (ISP), you can submit your work one, two or three weeks later in line with your ISP allowance.

Groupwork Processes

For details on how to deal with dysfunctional group members who are not contributing their fair share to the work of the group please refer to your programme student guide and also speak to the module tutor.

Feedback on your work will be provided in a range of ways at various times throughout this module, and different feedback will serve slightly different purposes. Feedback is designed to support your learning and help you to improve subsequent work, so you need to get the most out of the feedback provided.

If you would like further information about feedback, or how to use it, please talk to your tutor on this module or your PG Programme Lead Turnitin.

It may be requested that the Assignment on this module will be submitted through Turnitin. Turnitin is a web-based tool that supports the development of good academic practice when preparing written work for assessment. This text-matching tool allows academic staff to check assignments for improper use of sources or potential plagiarism by comparing it against continuously up-dated databases (including web-pages and other student work). Further information on the use of Turnitin can be found on the Brookes Virtual site for this module.