Introducing professional development at undergraduate level

The Chartered Institute of Building has recently introduced the Professional Development Programme (PDP) as the principal route to chartered status for university graduates. We are seeking to prepare students by inducting them in the processes of such a competence based programme through encouraging the 'recording of achievement' and the development of skill. Our experiences in preparing first-year undergraduate students to make use of the RAPID (Recording Achievement for Professional and Individual Development) Progress File for these purposes reveal a number of salutary lessons. A survey of students involved in the induction programme reveals both a general disinterest in these processes and difficulty in applying the activities at a basic level. This highlights the challenges of promoting the concepts of personal and professional development, competence based learning, and the skills of reflecting upon and recording achievement in a traditional learning environment. We are drawn to conclude that such processes when introduced to students must be embedded within existing academic structures and frameworks. In addition, we recommend that the higher education sector places a greater emphasis on the personal development of students, and that professional institutions need to provide greater incentives to encourage students to engage in their professional development at an early stage.