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In March 2013 the project "Empowering Doctoral Candidates through Personal Development Planning" was launched. This project is a joint venture between the Matej Bel University (Banská Bystrica ), the Comenius University (Bratislava) and the Center of Doctoral Studies of the University of Vienna. The project aims at contributing to a change of the PhD training perspective towards a primarly primarily human centred individualized outcome of the PhD trajectory. Whereas previously the focus was on the written dissertation and other publications, today the young independent researcher, who has acquired a number of skills and competences and experienced a substantial gain through performing research and working independently, is considered as the major outcome of a doctorate. Universities have developed a variety of strategies to encourage PhD candidates to reflect upon and evaluate their own research experiences and plan for their own development. Influenced by the Higher Education System in the UK, the term Personal Development Planning (PDP) has become popular to describe this process. Several institutions such as The Quality Assurance Agency for Higher Education (QAA) in the UK, have produced guidelines to promote PDP as a core educational process.
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