# Transcript

Welcome to the Planning a better future course. By studying this course, you’ll be taking your first steps into developing a better future for yourself.

There may be many reasons why you’ve chosen to study this course. It might be to help you think about where you're going in your career, and what you’d like to achieve, or simply for personal interest, and to develop your confidence as a learner.

If you complete the short assessment at the end of each section, you'll be able to collect a badge. These virtual badge provides a form of recognition for your learning and you can display them on your social media profiles – for example, LinkedIn and Facebook.

Planning a better future is made up of three sections. In Section 1, you will consider how you got here, reflecting on your roles in life, your confidence in those roles, and positive and negative experiences you've had; and realising your strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats.

Section 2 will look at where you want to go, and the changes you want to make. This section will enable you to gather information and consider what options are available to you and lastly, Section 3 covers how to get to your planned destination. This involves creating your own action plan, looking up possibilities of work experience, voluntary work, networking, and creating contacts. It also considers how to compete job applications, and prepares you for interviews. Finally, you will look at using social media to aid in networking.

At the end of the three sections, you will find information on next steps, which will signpost you to relevant websites and resources relating to further development of your learning in relation to planning a better future.

We do encourage you to study every section of this course, as each section is relevant to the next one, and often refers to activities previously carried out. The course is flexible, and there’s no time limit for completion. You can take it in small chunks, working whenever you like.

We recommend you try to engage with all of the sections in order to receive a statement of participation at the end, which recognises the learning outcomes you have met. You can then show this to your employer as evidence of your learning, if you wish.

There are guided activities throughout the course, which will help you to reflect upon your own practise, and a range of interactive quizzes at the end of each section, which gives you the opportunity to earn your badge for that section. You might find it useful to talk about your work in this course with a friend, partner, or work colleague. It might help you to stay motivated, and also give you new ideas.

I do hope you enjoy the course, and I wish you luck for your future career development.