This paper addresses the importance of Personal Development of students
in virtual learning environments and designs a specific approach for
fostering their personal capabilities facilitated by a Personal
Tutorship Programme in e-learning platforms. This programme tries to
extend students’ learning beyond the disciplinary focus and engage them
in acquiring some essential competencies they will need in their
professional and personal life. To do so, one storyboard has been drawn
based on the current literature as well as experiences of some experts
including students, entrepreneurs and academics represented through some
focus groups. This storyboard designs a structured on-line framework
for supporting students’ personal development via an interactive and
bilateral personal tutorship facility. Our primary focus is on
allocating some technical capabilities in an e-learning platform based
on the personal pedagogical experiences of participants, enabling
students to use them for their personal development planning. Before
drawing the storyboard four descriptive components named Functional
Specifications (FS) have been written based on the participants’
experiences, trying for defining different aspects of the storyboard.
Descriptions and examples are given of some different approaches that
are being used to support this facility. While the paper is written from
an e-learning perspective, the issues and processes raised are
applicable to any higher education system that seeks to value and reward
personal development via designing an academic advisory system for
their students.