1. SWOT and Action Planning

2. The SWOT Analysis will help you analyse where you are at the moment

3. Strengths What are you good at? Don't limit yourself to your student role only. What about your workplace skills and knowledge, hobbies and clubs, your personal skills? What about yourself are you happy with? What is your approach/philosophy to life? What have you achieved in your life?

4. Weaknesses - areas to work on This section is not about blame, it should be an honest assessment of the areas you would like to improve on. It might help to list these areas initially. You should also consider: what would I like to change about myself and what things did I hope to have achieved by now?

5. Opportunities Build on your strengths! How will you utilise and develop your identified strengths?

6. Threats These are essentially barriers to your success: you might want to reflect here upon some of your identified areas to work on. What might your weaknesses tell you about yourself and the way that you approach life? Are the barriers real or perceived? Can you suggest who and what might help you overcome these barriers ?

7. Action Planning

8. Pebblepad action planning tool Action planning can help you to identify your beliefs and values. It can help you to explore your past and present behaviour. Moving through the reflective process can support you in your learning as you reflect upon yourself as 'learner' from a more analytical viewpoint. Remember that action planning is a dynamic process that you should return to throughout this year.

9. It couldn’t be easier : Go to ‘create new’ and click on ‘action plan’ Current Situation: what is your situation now? Think of this as a pen portrait of yourself as a student. What do I need to know about you in order to support you in your studies? It is important to identify and include other areas of your life that may impact upon your current situation e.g. working full time and undertaking part time study, the length of time since you were last in education. This section should be a description as we will reflect (attend to feelings) and plan later in the process

10. Ideal Situation: blue skies thinking - where do wish that you were 'ideally' on this learning journey? What are your goals? This may include educational, employment and personal aspirations. Steps to success In this section you should identify the small and large steps that you will need to take to reach your ideal situation. You should also plan strategies that will help you - e.g. develop my internet search skills by seeking support in the Learning Centre.

11. Reflection on action planning Now that you have carefully considered and described your current situation you should think about how you feel about the above activity, listed strengths, areas to work on and action points. What do you know about yourself as a learner/individual now that you were not aware of before? Were you surprised? How will you use this information in the future? Think about the ways in which you approached this activity - what does it say about your beliefs and perceptions? How do you feel about your learning and development?