Touchstone 4: Creating a Skill Development Plan

What You Will Learn: This assignment will give you a starting plan for personal and professional development that you can review with your career coach.

Why It Matters: This touchstone gives you the opportunity to reflect on your strengths, opportunities for improvement, and ways in which you have demonstrated the 10 Skills. You will draft elements of a career plan which include strategies for developing the 10 Skills for advancing in college, work, and life, and discuss how the 10 Skills connect to your overall goals. Such self-reflection is a valuable process for learning and development.

What You Will Hand In: You will download the template and complete it with your own content, then upload it in the original MS Word (.doc or .docx) format.

Keys to Success:

• Develop and submit original work.
• Download the template and complete it by responding to all ten questions.
• Identify an employability skill you would like to develop and write an action plan with to realize your goals.

Helpful Links:

Instructions

Step 1: Prepare to Create Your Skill Development Plan

• Review the 10 skills described in the course and consider how you have demonstrated each skill in your past, which skills are you strengths, and which skill you would most like to develop further.

Step 2: Download the Example and Template

download

Step 3: Write Your Skill Development Plan

• Complete the template by responding to each of the four parts.

Part 1. Target a Skill

Choose one of the 10 employability skills you would like to improve. You will list your strengths and weaknesses pertaining to the skill and then develop a positive goal statement that describes the outcomes you plan to achieve. For this part, complete steps 15 in the template below using 50 words or fewer for each step.

Part 2. Develop an Action Plan

Recall strategies you learned in this course that you can use to boost your targeted skill. You will create an action plan for improvement and identify potential barriers to overcome along the way. With your goals in mind, complete steps 68 in the template below using 100 words or fewer for each step.

Part 3. Leverage Your Support System

Identify people in your personal and professional network who can help you with your skill development plan. They can check your progress and periodically give you feedback. With your action plan in mind, complete step 9 in the template below using 50 words or fewer.

Part 4. Reconnect to Your Life Goals

Explain the connection between your skill development plan and your larger personal, academic, or career goals as you look toward the future. If needed, reflect on how you see yourself in terms of your values, aspirations, key qualities, goals, strengths, and areas of growth. With your larger goals in mind, complete step 10 in a paragraph using 150 words or fewer.

Step 4: Review and Submit Your Work

• Once you have filled out the template, take a moment to review your work and use the rubric to make sure you have met all of the goals of the assignment. Once you are satisfied you can upload it in the original Microsoft Word (.docx) format.