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Postgraduate researchers

Breadcrumbs

Manage your career with the Vitae RDF Planner

Vitae RDF Planner has been developed by Vitae in response to sector-wide requests for an interactive, straightforward way for researchers to manage their professional development using the comprehensive Vitae Researcher Development Framework (RDF).

The Planner enables you to:

  • keep a record of all your professional development activities in one place 
  • identify your expertise and capabilities to plan your career 
  • print reports for discussions with mentors, supervisors, career advisors etc.  
  • identify your learning and development needs and monitor progress 
  • upload files such as CVs, conference details, testimonials to record achievements 
  • view the attributes of successful researchers through a ‘lens' on employability, enterprise, leadership and more 

Introduction to the RDF Planner

How to access the RDF Planner

The RDF Planner was developed during 2012 and was piloted with a number of UK and international institutions in early 2013. The Planner is now available for institutions on subscription. If you wish to explore the RDF Planner and all its features, as an institution, with a small group of your researchers, you can trial it in for up to three months without any obligation. Please contact jen.reynolds@vitae.ac.uk.

If you are a researcher and wish to explore the RDF Planner please check with your institution, in the first instance, to see if they have taken up a subscription. Alternatively individual subscriptions will be available in summer 2013.

Further subscription information can be found here for UK institutions and here for international institutions.

Benefits to institutions

The Vitae RDF Planner enables your institution to:

  • underpin policies for supporting the professional development of researchers
  • encourage researchers to take charge of their career development and increase their employability
  • improve the researcher experience
  • join a community of HE institutions to share best practice around the Planner and the internationally recognised RDF
  • monitor organisational use through a straightforward interface
  • generate reports for benchmarking and self-evaluation
  • signpost your development resources to researchers.  

 

Benefits to researchers

The user-friendly RDF Planner provides researchers with:

  • insights into a range of attributes and competencies of successful researchers
  • the opportunity to recognise, reflect upon and evidence current expertise, capabilities and achievements against career goals
  • links to institutional and Vitae resources in one place
  • an easy way to download reports to monitor milestones and celebrate progress
  • a way to inform discussions between managers and supervisors.

Resources