Welcome to the Skills-Based introduction

to the ePARs Personal Evidence Database

(PED)

Keep clicking and this slideshow will take you through the system

What you can put into the Personal Evidence Database (PED)

• Information about your key activities and achievements – useful for:

– progress review meetings with tutors– job interviews– CV writing

• Evidence of your academic and employability skills

– Capture your skills experience while the details are still fresh in your mind– Retrieve the details whenever you need them, e.g. for a module report or to quote to a potential employer

What you can get back from your PED:

• An at-a-glance visual display of how your skills evidence is growing.

• Instant updating of your Skills Progress Chart every time you enter a new piece of information

• Selections of your data emailed to you, for use in reports, review meetings, job applications, job interviews, CVs etc

• Direct export of your data into the ePARs CV-builder coming soon

Welcome page How to start

Access the Skills Progress Chart anytime via the menu bar, which appears at the top of every screen

Or 2. Try the ACTIVITY route: Taking a key module? Working part-time? Running a society? Doing community action? Travelling? Start capturing the key aspects of it here.

1. Try the SKILLS route: Which skills have you already got?The PED helps you locate some to get you started

The welcome page offers youtwo good ways into the PED, when you begin

A note for later: Once you’ve got data in the PED, the Skills Progress Chart could be your favourite way into the system

Please note: Some sections of the PED are PRIVATE Other sections are SHARED

The Activity route provides a log or notes, as well as skills evidence. The log and notes are private to you, but you can opt to share items from them with tutors and students in yourSchool if you wish. In a few Schools, the PED is used within the curriculum and it may be a module requirement for you to share logs or notes with your tutor.

Your Skills Progress Chart -- and theevidence you enter behind it -- are shared with your personal tutor, automatically (read only). The chart may be useful to look at in personal tutorials. The skills evidence will help your tutor write references for you.

Once you get going, please yourself!

The two routes illustrated behind the help links on the Welcome page are just to get you started.

 Once you get going, you can mix and match them, picking out the sections that work best for you.

 Unless your School requires you to work with part of the PED, it’s all optional, so you can use as much or as little as you like.

This introduction to the PED shows the Skills-based route

From the PED Welcome page you click here to go to the Identify Skills page

You start with a simple, fun exercise to identify your skills Which of these qualities

do you have? Click the boxes next to all the words which describe you.

When you’ve done, click Submit

Your selections come back highlighted.

Click on one to go through and enter some evidence.

This is the Identify Skills page

Next: Link your highlighted quality to an activity where you

have used it

Your highlighted quality falls within this broad skills area

It relates to this specific skill

Think of a specific activity where you have shown the skill. First, does it relate to Study, Work-based experience or Further activities? Set the Activity Type from the drop-down menu.

Note: Introducing your material to the database in this way makes it possible for you to search it later

Is the specific activity already on your list of activities? (A few students’ PEDs contain modules entered by their Schools.) Select it from the drop-down menu here.

If you need to add a new activity to the list, click here.

The PED takes you to the

New Activity page First set the Activity Type: choose Study, Work-based experience or Further activities from the drop-down menu. Then enter the title of your new activity.

Now fill in further information if you wish. But you can come back later to do this, if you prefer.

Fill in these boxes, if you wish, for an activity that is ongoing

Then click submit

Lower down the same screen …

Now write about how you used the skill in that specific

activity

Every entry you make in the PED is dated for you automatically

Enter your evidence in the Notes textbox

If you wish, click a button to indicate how confident you are feeling with the skill. The rating will appear on your Skills Progress Chart

Note: Your entries will build up and be displayed lower down on this page

Click Submit

The PED will then show you the whole entry

What would you like to do next?

You now have some further options

Stay with the same activity and add evidence for same/different skill If you need stronger evidence of

this skill, turn it into a target (creates an orange square on your Skills Progress Chart)

Click here to display your dated entries in ascending or descending order

Or stick with the same skill and add evidence from a different activity

Your skills evidence changes the display

on your Skills Progress Chart

The chart shows the three basic areas of activity. (You can click on these to get to the specific activities you have entered)

Also the broad skills headings. (You can click on these to get to the specific sub-skills)

Each grey square represents a specific skill. Hover with the mouse to see the name. Click on it to make it a target or to enter evidence.

Once evidence is entered for a skill, its square changes colour. Click on it to go to the evidence. The number is the latest confidence rating (optional).

This is what is displayed below the chart

on the same screen

The chart uses 5 colours. Here’s the key

You can call up a snapshot of your progress for any time-window you like.

There are links to other sites with ideas for further activities

You can print the chart out, e.g. for a meeting with a careers adviser. For any screen, use a PED Print button or the print function on your PC

Using the To Do list This tool is private to you Access it from the menu bar

Click here to add an item to the list. Enter details and set priority level. Press submit.

Your items come to the top of the list, in priority order

You can edit and delete them

Target skills come next, automatically. Click on ‘evidence skills’ to add some evidence

The PED can remind you to review your To Do list if you wish

Using the Select Outputs toolThis is the tool you use to get the read-outs of your data which you will need for various purposes

There’s a choice of 5 ways to collate your data, depending on what you want it for

Click on any heading and you can go on to choose the specific material you want. Press an email button and the PED sends you the collated details as an email attachment.

You can then incorporate them in reports, jobs applications, CVs, etc

Thank you and Good Luck – but before you go …

• The PED is NEW. It was developed in 2002-03 with the help of Nottingham students and staff. The ePARs team hope you will find it useful and enjoy using it.

• You are one of the first people to see it. We would really appreciate receiving your feedback, so that we can improve it during 2003-04.

• Please send us an email ePARs-ped@nottingham.ac.uk You can use the email link on the PED Welcome page. Let us know of any problems – tell us what you do like and what you don’t like – send us your suggestions

• Click on the other help link on the PED Welcome page if you would like to tour the Introduction to the Activity-based Route.