My post on ‘Understanding PEDR’ explains what it is, and why you need to do it. This post intends to help you in completing PEDR and what you should focus on when recording your experience.
Time recording:
For ease and accuracy, it’s helpful if you keep a track of what you have been doing every day for the quarter your PEDR covers. This helps you enter time quickly and more accurately when filling out your sheets. It also helps you become more aware of how long a task takes which is useful in your career as well as later on in your Part III.
Text:
I find that in the project section of the PEDR it is easiest to stick to facts, about what you did, when, whether it was a new skill to you or not, and how it fits into the overall project. Project details should include things like budget, and programme (timetable) as well as what RIBA stages it involves how many team members, etc.
The essay/review part of your PEDR is where you can talk about your thoughts, feelings, and expectations of the experience. This is the place to discuss things you found easy or difficult, your opinion on what happened and whether it could be improved in the future, as well as what experience you would like to gain in the next quarter and what you would like help with from your workplace and workplace mentor.
There are cross-overs between the two areas above, but keeping one largely factual and the next more considered helps you fill out PEDR more methodically, as well as giving you one section to refer back to when you sit your Part III in order to assess your experience.
Using ARB Part 3 professional criteria:
Throughout the text in your PEDR you can reference how to experience you are gaining is aligning with the ‘ARB Part 3 professional criteria’. This document records the criteria you must meet in order to pass your part 3 examination. Even if you are only just beginning filling in PEDR, it is helpful to understand the criteria in order to assess your own experience. You will see that the professional criteria are split into 5 areas, and each has 10 sub-points, for PEDR it is too onerous to list the individual 10 sub-points, you only need to reference something as an example of PC1-5 as and when necessary. You should consider referencing something only if it is an especially good example of that criterion or a new experience to you. By punctuating your PEDR with references to the 5 professional criteria you clearly demonstrate that you consider yourself to have experience with them, however broad. You also make it easier for writing your career appraisal or other documents in part III, by highlighting for yourself when you are gaining particularly relevant experience.
An example of a very ‘normal’ entry of my own PEDR is below, where I have referenced criteria as relevant:
Two of my videos on youtube that could help with this are linked below and a further blog post called ‘Completing PEDR’ looks at what you should focus on when actually filling out your sheets.
Thanks for reading.