Planning · Lesson 3
Developing an IDP
Learn how to use Individual Development Plans (IDPs) to help your students set goals, reflect on their progress, and stay engaged throughout their graduate studies.
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Module Objectives
By the end of this module, supervisors will be able to:
- Understand what an Individual Development Plan is and why they are important
- Encourage your students to self-reflect and set personal and professional goals
- Explore opportunities and experiences for your students to engage in
- Set expectations for weekly/monthly check-ins
Parts of this module were created using York University’s Individual Development Plan https://www.yorku.ca/gradstudies/idp/
What is an Individualized Development Plan (IDP)?
An IDP is a personalized plan that helps outline a student’s career goals and the specific skills or competencies they need to achieve them. IDPs act as a roadmap for professional growth and will help students identify their strengths and areas of improvement.
IDPs will help you and your graduate student
- Reflect on strengths and opportunities
- Proactively plan career goals and timelines
- Seek out experiences to help build skills and experiences
- Create opportunities for regular conversations and checkpoints
IDPs are the responsibility of your student and can be shared with others, including committee members, mentors, managers and fellow students.
Creating an Individualized Development Plan (IDP)
TRU Graduate Studies has developed an IDP tool to assist graduate students in identifying and developing goals during their graduate studies.
When creating an IDP with your student, you can help enhance their professional growth and skills by:
Exploring:
Guide students in setting and communicating goals related to teaching, research and/or professional development by exploring opportunities both academically and co-curricular.
Engaging
Encourage students to engage in experiences and reflect on skills and competencies during graduate work and within personal and professional spaces
Enhancing
Share opportunities for students to enhance their strengths, talents and passions through participation in events and workshops during their studies.
The 5 Steps in Creating an IDP
The development of an IDP with your graduate student is an opportunity to work together towards personal goals and program completion. Your graduate student should lead in the development of their personal plan with your guidance. It is encouraged that you revisit your student’s IDP over the course their academic studies as interests and long-term goals can evolve, change or be completed.
The five steps in working with the IDP are as follows:
1. Self-Assessment: reflecting on past experiences to help with future experiences
2. Setting Goals: understanding the knowledge and skills you want and need
3. Exploring Opportunities: knowing what experiences are available on and off campus
4. Engagement: putting your plan into practice/achieving your goals
5. Monitoring: revisit, check off or change goals and engagement in activities as needed
Self-assessment
The first step in developing an IDP is to guide your student through self-reflection. Encourage your students to reflect on the questions below as it will give a better understanding of where to start and continue to progress. This will also help provide you, their supervisor, with an idea of how best to support and guide your student through the process. The answers to these questions may change and/or evolve during your student’s studies as they experience new things and engage in new activities … and that’s okay!
What are my short- or long-term goals for academic and future career success?
- What are my current areas of strength?
- What areas do I want to improve on?
- What are my self-improvement goals?
- What new skills do I want to acquire?
Setting Goals
Building on the responses from your self-assessment, help guide and support them in creating manageable and sustainable goals. This section of the IDP encourages students to share their top goals and prioritize them in order of importance, ability to achieve, and length of time to complete. This process will help build a strategy for your student to complete both short- and long-term goals. It will also encourage your students to put their plan into action. Your role during this stage is to help support them in reaching their goals while keeping on top of their academic timeline.
When reviewing your student’s self-reflection, ask them:
- What are some of the primary skills that you are looking to acquire or improve over the course of the coming year?
- What is your current level of knowledge/expertise in these skills?
- How does this fit in with your academic plan? Will it complement or compete with your progress?
In this section, you will encourage your student to focus on the big picture skill rather than a specific outcome or goal. These skills will help guide the development of goals (e.g., improving knowledge mobilization skills – communicating to a non-specialist audience, which leads to “participating in a research competition”).
| Goal | Skills/Area of Expertise | Current Level of Knowledge/Experience |
| 1. (e.g., Participate in a research communication competition) | (e.g., improve knowledge mobilization skills) | (e.g., Satisfactory) |
| 2. | ||
| 3. | ||
| 4. | ||
| 5. | , |
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As your student starts to explore opportunities to fulfill their goals, we encourage you to use the GRADvantage pathway to help them navigate opportunities on and off campus. These opportunities will help them develop the key skills they will need to succeed. Applying the learning from the previous module, including information and resources from the GRADvantage framework, guide your student in exploring opportunities to develop key areas of their graduate experience.
Using the chart in each section, have your student map out the experiences they are interested in for each domain to help plan out your graduate pathway. For an IDP overview of all domains, download the template below to help your student transfer all experiences onto one page if it will help.
Don’t forget to encourage your student to start their GRADvantage pathway on ExperienceBU.
Researcher
A researcher generates original, meaningful, and collaborative research (knowledge) to create, advance, and apply information locally, nationally, and globally.
As a graduate student, you are more than just a consumer of knowledge; you are also a producer of knowledge (via research and inquiry). During your studies, you will learn how to collect, create, analyze, and share knowledge. Actively working to build your skills in this focus area will enable you to contribute to advancing knowledge and research within your chosen discipline at TRU and beyond.
Research Development and Knowledge Creation
Knowledge Mobilization
Scholarships and Funding
Examples
- Participate in an internal or external conference
- Attend a Knowledge Mobilization Workshop
- Present at a Research Café
| Experience What have I achieved? | Goals What do I want to do/improve on? | Next Steps What resources do I need to succeed? | Reflection Did I achieve my goal(s)? What did I learn? |
Communicator
A communicator masters communication skills through using multiple mediums to listen, learn, and clearly explain complex ideas and translate knowledge to diverse audiences in various contexts.
As a graduate student, building communication skills is an important part of your experience and can include writing and presenting course assignments, journaling, responding to email requests, building grant applications, and research proposals.
Written
Oral
Visual
Examples
- Attend an academic writing consult to help improve your writing and connect with others
- Participate in a Research Communication competition and practice your public speaking skills
- Create an infographic image to communicate your research
| Experience What have I achieved? | Goals What do I want to do/improve on? | Next Steps What resources do I need to succeed? | Reflection Did I achieve my goal(s)? What did I learn? |
Innovator
An innovator implements and fosters a social, cultural, and commercial mindset across a wide range of research and innovation contexts.
As a graduate student, you will discover new and creative ways of approaching research and making an impact in your field. Innovators implement and foster a social, cultural, and commercial mindset and are driven to make a positive difference in the world through their work.
Innovation
Entrepreneurship
Creativity and Design
Examples
- Attend a LINC workshop on creative, innovation or entrepreneurship
- Visit the Library Makerspace and experiment with new and innovative technologies
- Compete in a Graduate Studies research competition
| Experience What have I achieved? | Goals What do I want to do/improve on? | Next Steps What resources do I need to succeed? | Reflection Did I achieve my goal(s)? What did I learn? |
Leader
A leader inspires, supports, and fosters growth, success, and well-being in themselves and others through academic pursuits and personal and practical contexts.
As a graduate student, your leadership skills will be elevated as you inspire and motivate yourself and others to achieve goals, while also supporting well-being and personal growth. Leaders should strive to create a positive and supportive environment that encourages collaboration, innovation, and the pursuit of excellence by fostering growth, success, and well-being in themselves and others.
Leadership
Self-awareness
Ethical practice
Examples
- Complete GRAD 101 – Graduate Academic Program
- Participate in a CELT teaching and learning workshop
- Attend a wellness activity during Thrive Week
| Experience What have I achieved? | Goals What do I want to do/improve on? | Next Steps What resources do I need to succeed? | Reflection Did I achieve my goal(s)? What did I learn? |
Community Builder
A community builder authentically embodies the qualities and competencies to build community and connection through meaningful, academic, and experiential engagement.
Community builders have a deep understanding of the communities they serve, including their unique needs, challenges, and strengths. By combining academic and experiential engagement, community builders can create a rich and rewarding environment that fosters connection and growth.
Local and Global Engagement
Collaboration
Reflection
Examples
- Attend a Graduate Student Association Fall AGM or Spring AGM
- Participate in a Human Rights and Equity workshop or event
- Attend a Hadiyaˀdagénhahs First Nations, Métis, and Inuit Student Centre event or workshop
| Experience What have I achieved? | Goals What do I want to do/improve on? | Next Steps What resources do I need to succeed? | Reflection Did I achieve my goal(s)? What did I learn? |
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Exploring Opportunities & Engagement
For next steps, have your student plan out one to two concrete experiences that will help them improve their expertise, abilities and overall confidence. These activities should align with your students’ goals and can include workshops, events, meetings, members and more. All opportunities should include an opportunity to learn, build and apply skills and reflect.
This next step allows your student to document their experiences and allows them to create a time frame along with learning outcomes. Remind your students that this is a working document.
| Activity/Experience | Time Frame | Outcome |
| (e.g., attended a workshop on presenting research) | (e.g., Current academic year) | (e.g., Developed key skills and strategies to make an effective presentation and engage an audience.) |
Checking-in
Revisit your student’s IDP regularly. This can be a tool used in progress meetings or as they update their goals and engagement in activities throughout the year. Encourage your student to share their IDPs with other mentors in their life as well.
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