What is the Personal Professional Skills Lab and who is it for?

The Personal Professional Skills Lab (PPSL) is an elective programme for all FSW undergraduates entering from 2024. The aim of the PPSL is to encourage students to develop personal and professional skills during their bachelor studies that will give them greater resilience and direction: both within their studies and further careers and in their personal lives.  

PPSL combines programmes from different FSW departments into a streamlined skills learning path. Students choose training courses from faculty student support services (Career Service FSW, POPcorner, Personal Development Centre, Honours College FSW, student psychologists) that are relevant to them at a time that suits them. FSW students who have taken 6 or more of these modules in their three undergraduate years are eligible for the Personal Professional Skills Certificate.

Click here to read the student webpage of the Personal Professional Skills Lab

Een voorbeeld

An example of PPSL as a pathway during the bachelor's programme:

year 1 - 1x starter module, 1x Study skills - study techniques workshop ;
year 2 - 1x Talent and Dragon workshop, 1x CV & Cover Letter workshop;
year 3 - 1x Young Transformational Leadership workshop 1x final module.

How the programme is structured is shown below.

As a teacher, what can you do with this?

The content of the starter module is determined in close cooperation with each institute. However, success of this PPSL curriculum hinges on awareness and vocal support from lecturers and staff. Therefore, we will keep in touch with lecturers, and we would like to invite you to contact us and share ideas as well. Practically, it would help tremendously, where possible, to encourage your own students to participate in the PPSL Certification Track. This will come into play from October 2024 onwards.

Important opportunities for encouraging PPSL among your students:

• Directing students to the PPSL Brightspace (see image below). This is where students can find all information about PPSL and sign up for elective modules. If, as a teacher, you would like access to this Brightspace page, please send an e-mail to  studentplaza@fsw.leidenuniv.nl
   
• If you want to refer to specific PPSL modules when there are questions (e.g. around choosing a direction, talent and competence development, self-regulation around study behaviour, study problems, etc.) you can find all the training courses offered here in the workshop calendar.
   
• Below you will find the promotion video's in Dutch and English. 

1. The Dutch video (2 min.), download here. The short version (30 sec), download here.
2. The English video (2 min.), download here. The short version (30 sec), download here.

• Here you can find a Powerpointslide with basic info and the promotion video, to show during a lecture or workgroup.

Lastly, we would appreciate to hear your experiences with these topics and your ideas regarding PPSL and the range of all courses within PPSL. Please contact us via: studentplaza@fsw.leidenuniv.nl

How are PPSL and FSW student support services related?

Last year, FSW's support organisations have already united in one place: the Student Plaza, physically present on the ground floor in FSW. All their hands-on workshops are now bundled in a cohesive way in the PPSL, and rewarded with a certificate. The full offering of all workshops can be found in the workshop calendar on the website of Universiteit Leiden. The Honours College is currently developing new workshops, which will also be included in the calendar.

Why is FSW doing this in the first place?

Student support around self-regulation is considered important by lecturers and students within FSW (FSW 2024 SRL survey, in preparation). Much is available: the offer of Career Service, Personal Development Centre, POPcorner and the Honours College is broad and well-developed. However, findability and participation in interventions lagged behind. The wide offerings struggled to find their way to students, partly due to fragmented communication and lack of a common line. PPSL offers a streamlining of existing offerings, and a certificate that is motivational and linked to a personal online portfolio for each student (the Learning My Way portfolio system developed within FSW). This runs as a unique thread through the Ba programme for all participating students. Most PPSL modules focus on five of the transferable skills that the university considers of great importance: reflecting, independent learning, collaborating, oral communication and resilience.

Why in this way?

Faculty research has shown that a large majority of our students feel that training of self-regulation skills and transferable skills (meta-curricular skills) should be embedded in their own study programme (FSW 2024 SRL research, in preparation). However, FSW study programmes cannot accommodate all of these. Therefore, last year, the education directors of the FSW study programmes, with the support of the Faculty Council (FC) and faculty student bodies, opted for this elegant solution: one compulsory introductory PPSL meeting, after which each student makes his or her own choice as to whether to acquire this faculty certificate to complement the bachelor's degree.

How and when does PPSL start?

From 1 October 2024, the PPSL will have a Brightspace page to which all first-year FSW students will be added. Through the PPSL Brightspace page, all information about the PPSL, certificate and workshop offerings will be available.

To introduce students to the PPSL and inform them of the possibility of obtaining the PPSL certificate, a Starter Module is organised for all first-year students. The module is sceduled in MyTimeTable, as part of the first year study programme. In this first meeting, students will receive information about the workshops and the certificate. There will also be a practical component where students will be introduced to a pilot workshop of PPSL. The Starter Module counts as the first required workshop for the certificate.

After this meeting, students can choose whether they want to obtain the PPSL certificate during their Bachelor studies. To this end, they will attend at least four more elective workshops at any time during their bachelors. The workshop offer is diverse, and can be found in the course calender through the PPSL Brightspace. This way, students can choose workshops that are relevant to them, at a time when it is relevant to them. The last requirement is to participate in the Final Module of the PPSL, where they determine the harvest and set their eyes on the future.

Starter Module per institute

In coordination with the programmes, one compulsory kick-off meeting (the start module) was planned around blocks 2 and 3 of Ba 1 for all students in small working groups; at a time when there was space in the timetables. We facilitate a catch-up opportunity for students who are unable to attend.

Planning of Starter Modules PPSL 2024

• Political Science: 25 October 2024
• IRO: 24 & 25 October 2024
• Psychology/IBP: 19 & 20 December 2024
• Cultural Anthropology and Development Sociology: 31 January 2025
• Pedagogical Sciences: similar modules allready integrated in curriculum, no special Starter Module.

Extra course load?

The additional course load is minimal and can be spread by the student over the undergraduate years. After the first compulsory two-hour workshop (in a group of +-20), students are free to put together their personal-professional skills learning path. At the time it suits them, they enrol in one of the offered modules, each taking up to three hours of contact and reflection time. To qualify for the certificate, students have completed a total of four elective modules and one final module in addition to the compulsory workshop. Students are free to take more and all completed modules will be listed on the certificate. Each PPSL module is also offered several times during each academic year.

What is written on the certificate?

The Personal Professional Skills Certificate of the faculty will explicitly state which self-regulation/career-preparation skills the student has mastered. This will be linked to the 13 meta-curricular transferable skills.