Welcome to the Activities-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 Chartanytime 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 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 Activity-based route

From the PED Welcome page you click here to go to the New Activity page

This is the New Activity page

If the activity is a module, click here for a shortcut to completing this page

If not, use the drop-down menu to set the type of activity.Specify Study, Work-basedExperience or Further activities.Then give the activity a title

Fill in further info as appropriate. You can editthis at any time.

If your activity is ongoing, you can create an email link to a contact person,e.g. activity supervisor, organiser,tutor or mentor

Set the PED to email you a Regular reminder to update the Activity record if you wish.

Click ‘submit’

Further down the same page …

Next: Check the activity details and choose a tool

You can amend the activity details. Click edit.

You can choose any or all of these three ways to write about the activity …

1. The ONGOING LOG helps you note key things about the activity while it is going on

3. The EVIDENCE SKILLStool helps you record the skills you use in the activity

You can remove theactivity from thedatabase. Click delete

2. The OVERVIEW NOTES tool helps you look back over all or part of it and sum things up

Aim of this log: trackingthe experience as it happens

There’s a choice of seven headings to help you analyse the experience of doing the activity and think about ways of enhancing what you achieve

Click on any topic, any time, to open a notes textbox

The ONGOING LOG tool

Writing in the log

Select a topic. Prompts appear under the heading, to help you decide what to write

Enter notes in the textbox.Click ‘save draft’ if you might want toedit your text. Click ‘submit’ if it’s finished

Previous entries build up and are displayed here

You can share any ‘submitted’ section of your log, specifying a tutor or other studentsfrom your School. Please get their agreement first! Everything submitted in thesection at any time -- earlier or later – can then be read, until you switch the sharing off.

They are dated automatically

To read feedback someone enters about a sharedsection of your log, click here

Aim of this tool:Summing up the activity

There’s a choice of seven headingsto help you identify key outcomes of the Activity in relation to yourperformance, employability and forward planning

If you have an Ongoing Log for the sameactivity, you can refer directly to it while working with the Overview Notes tool, and the other way about

As with the Ongoing Log, click on any topic to open a textbox with prompts foryour notes – the process is the same, but the content is very different

The OVERVIEW NOTES tool

Select a skill used in the activity

Here is your area of activity

Here is the title of your activity

Select the broad skills area you want from the first menu

Drop down the sub-menu alongside and select the specific skill. This fires you into the next screen

Using the EVIDENCE SKILLS tool

A textbox opens up for you to enter some evidence

Every entry you make in the PEDis automatically dated for you

Type your evidence here

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 further down on this same screen

Click Submit

The PED will then show you the whole entry

What would you like to do next?

Stay with the activity and add evidence for same/different skill

You now have some further options

OR Stick with the skill and add evidence from a different activity

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

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

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

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

The chart uses 5 colours. Here’s the key

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 five 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 Skills Route.