This final topic covers

• How to prepare an action plan to use AAC more effectively in your daily work and in your work with colleagues
• Support to prepare a SWOT analysis of your current status
• An action plan format for your own development or that of your team

Why Action Planning?

Action plans are a good way to turn your training experience into measurable results. Action plans have been defined as written documents completed by learners that describe how they expect to implement any learned skills or knowledge.

Start by writing down anything that to feel you could do to implement what you have learned from the course. 

Keep this list as a reference. You can refer to it later to see if your action plan has addressed the issues that you thought of at this early stage. 

Starting Simply

Now you have finished the course, look back over the content of the topics and your reflective journals, you can use your list as an additional reference. 

Refine your list in the light of further reflection and update your list as a reminder. As we develop the action plan always return to one simple question: “What do I want to do as a result of this new information and insights?”  Make some notes in your last reflective journal

Activity

This is a good stage to undertake a SWOT analysis of your work in AAC. You can do this by thinking about yourself, or thinking about the service you work within.

Think about what you have learned on the course and whether that changes your thoughts of the strengths and weaknesses

Action Plans

Action Plans can range from a simple list – ‘3 things I will do differently’ – to more complex plans with detailed steps, timescales and resources needed. When using action plans, there are a few issues to consider:

• Your action plan should have specific, measurable, achievable goals with timescales (SMART) – success cannot be measured from using vague or open-ended plans
• Share your plan with the group – public commitment encourages us to follow through on our plans
• Find a planning partner to work with, someone who can help you make decisions
• As you try to implement your action plan, you can check together what progress has been made, or discuss it on the course forum, email each other and share ideas and challenges.

We are going to start with a simple list which can then be elaborated into a more formal plan for yourself.

Action Plan Format

Using your SWOT analysis, and your refined list we will now ask you to start to create objectives and actions for yourself.

Step 1

Define what you plan to do in the next week, next four weeks and over the next three months. Be realistic about what you can achieve in the light of opportunities and threats. Try to identify areas of strength to build upon and weaknesses to address.

Step 2

Describe how you will know you have achieved what you set out to do, what evidence will there be that you have been successful in implementing the changes you wanted.

Step 3

Set a date when you will review your progress, put it into your diary for about 3 months from today. Think about who you might share your progress with to get another opinion.

Step 4

Complete the progress review and think about what has worked well and what has not, ask yourself why this was. Again, there will be some external factors that may be beyond your control, but there will also be personal factors that you might want to consider carefully  

Step 5

Prepare a new action plan, building upon what you have achieved so far and addressing anything that has been challenging. Action planning is cyclical and is the basis of continuous improvement.  

Download the action plan template

Summary 

"Have a bias towards action – let’s see something happen now. You can break that big plan into small steps and take the first step right away.” – Indira Gandhi

Further Reading 

Reflective Journal 

Presentation slides