Can your PLN be used to help professional development post-course?
Definitely. Your Personal Learning Network (PLN), when utilized correctly, can be a driving factor in furthering your professional development post-course. I think that it’s been fairly agreed upon that one of the main benefits of using a PLN is networking, that is, forming connections and relationships with others in a similar field of interest as yourself. With that being said, I think what’s often overlooked and under-utilized is a PLN’s ability to offer mentorships and feedback. To be more specific, in a post-course context, the reality for some individuals is that they have yet to even enter the field in which they want to pursue a career in, and because of that, might not know where to begin. In this context, PLN’s can provide the individual with the opportunity to connect to experienced individuals with the intention of acquiring a mentor – someone who is able to walk them through the ins and outs of the industry and pass on the knowledge they’ve learned throughout their own professional development. By having a mentor or mentors, you are able to receive constructive feedback regarding your skills and abilities which would ideally allow you to grow as an individual and further your professional development.
Can your PLN be relied on to open professional opportunities?
Although your PLN can definitely be used to open professional opportunities, in my opinion, it shouldn’t be relied on to do so. To further explain, PLN’s themselves don’t exactly know your intentions and therefore, by simply just having a PLN, you won’t magically have doors opened for you in terms of professional opportunities. What’s more important, to me, is the individual using the PLN, their intentions, and their skills/abilities; it all depends on how they utilize their PLN. For example, say you have two individuals who are both relying on their PLN’s to open up professional opportunities. If individual A is actively growing their PLN’s to network, find mentors, and acquire feedback, and individual B, although they have a PLN, isn’t putting as much energy into utilizing the resources that come with a PLN, it wouldn’t be a surprise if individual A had been presented with significantly more professional opportunities. To reiterate, simply possessing a PLN isn’t enough to open up professional opportunities; you must be willing to be actively putting in the time and energy into researching, networking, and growing your PLN in order to utilize it fully – and the ability to do so varies from one individual to the next.
I think that what you wrote about mentorship and feedback within a PLN is interesting, since it’s something that I hadn’t considered as a possibility in my mind. I had considered a PLN as more of a collective that we would engage with, rather than as something that could offer more direct mentoring as you touch on, but it’s certainly true. Thanks for sharing!