Aims of the course:
- To introduce participants to the field of psychology.
- To show how psychology can be applied to the understanding of everyday life settings.
- To show how various psychological approaches contribute to our understanding of everyday life settings.
Course content overview:
- This course will begin with an introduction to psychology by taking a context-based approach.
- Participants will be introduced to the history of psychology in week one and will then see how various psychological approaches help our understanding and contribute to explaining human behaviour in the following weeks.
- Participants will learn about the application of psychology in contexts such as child development, the environment, and health care.
- There will be a different focus each week on one particular field, to enable a greater depth of learning.
- Participants will be expected to recognise the multiple psychological perspectives that help our understanding of human behaviour in context.
Schedule (this course is completed entirely online):
Orientation Week: 24-30 May 2021
Teaching Weeks: 31 May-4 July 2021
Feedback Week: 5-11 July 2021
Week 0 - Preparing to study this course
Purpose/Learning outcomes
By studying this week the students should have:
•Become familiar with navigating around the VLE and from VLE to links and back
•Tested their ability to access files and the web conferencing software and sorted out any problems with the help of the eLearning team
•Investigated the ICE Online Resources repository
•Learnt how to look for, assess and reference internet resources
•Used Qmail to introduce themselves to other students
•Contributed to a discussion forum to introduce themselves to other students and discuss why they are interested in the course, what they hope to get out their studies and also to respond to forum discussion item sent out by tutor
Week 1- Introduction to the history of psychology
Purpose: The students will be introduced to the field of psychology and the developments over time with an emphasis on contemporary approaches within Psychology that can be applied to specific everyday life contexts. The supporting online material will explain how each approach within Psychology contributes to knowledge and understanding in context.
There will be a group discussion based on a research article to introduce students to the importance of research in psychology.
Learning outcomes
By studying this week the students should have:
•Awareness of the foundations of psychology, and developments over time.
•An ability to identify relevant approaches to the study of selected everyday life contexts.
•Had a discussion with the other students about their interests and knowledge gained about the importance of research in Psychology.
Week 2 - Environmental Psychology (personal space, territoriality, crowding)
Purpose: Environmental psychology is a relatively new area of psychology and is becoming increasingly influential as psychology becomes more applied to our everyday lives. It seeks understanding of human – environment relations.
Learning outcomes
By studying this week the students should have:
•An understanding of how environmental psychology can help us understand influences on personal space, territoriality, and crowding
•Be able to identify and discuss various psychological theories which explain the influences on personal space, territoriality, and crowding
Week 3 - Social Psychology (Prejudice and discrimination)
Purpose: To examine the nature and dimensions of prejudice and discrimination using a social psychological perspective
Learning outcomes
By studying this week the students should have:
•An awareness of some of the categories of prejudice and some forms of discrimination
•Identify some effects of prejudice
•An understanding of social psychological explanations of prejudice and discrimination
•An awareness of how social psychology can be used to describe, explain, and predict behaviour
Week 4 - Developmental Psychology (The acquisition of language)
Purpose: The development of children can be studied in many ways but one very important aspect is the development of language in human children. There have been a number of theoretical approaches to explain children’s acquisition of language and in this session we will explore some of these, as well as important questions relating to whether there is a critical period in which to learn a language, and some cross cultural comparisons.
Learning outcomes
By studying this week the students should have:
•Knowledge of how the development of language has been explained by developmental psycholinguistics
•Discussed how language develops in children
•Discussed cross cultural differences in the acquisition of language
Week 5 - Health Psychology (Stress)
Purpose: Exploring the stress link –Mind and body; how can we define and measure stress. Is there a link between stress and disease and how can we cope with stress?
Learning outcomes
By studying this week the students should have:
•An awareness of the different dimensions upon which health can be measured (e.g. psychological, behavioural, biological)
•An understanding of how health psychology can be used to examine the concept of stress
Week 6 - What Next? What other areas of psychology would you like to explore? What are your next steps?
Purpose
•Assessment of student learning
•Assessment of student satisfaction
•Encouragement of further study
Each week of an online course is roughly equivalent to 2-3 hours of classroom time. On top of this, participants should expect to spend roughly 2-3 hours reading material, etc., although this will vary from person to person.
While they have a specific start and end date and will follow a weekly schedule (for example, week 1 will cover topic A, week 2 will cover topic B), our tutor-led online courses are designed to be flexible and as such would normally not require participants to be online for a specific day of the week or time of the day (although some tutors may try to schedule times where participants can be online together for web seminars, which will be recorded so that those who are unable to be online at certain times are able to access material).
Unless otherwise stated, all course material will be posted on the Virtual Learning Environment (VLE) so that they can be accessed at any time throughout the duration of the course and interaction with your tutor and fellow participants will take place through a variety of different ways which will allow for both synchronous and asynchronous learning (discussion boards,etc).
A Certificate of Participation will be awarded to participants who contribute constructively to weekly discussions and exercises/assignments for the duration of the course.
What our students say:
"The real-life related topics and examples that we could relate to our life and experiences made this course a very good one"
"
For me, this course was excellent, I liked it too much! I learned aspects of psychology that I had not thought about before as: evolution of science and different views on some areas of psychology, methodologies, language learning (super interesting) and the various aspects of health psychology . "
"It’s been intellectually stimulating, challenged my preconceptions and instincts, and even led me to evaluate how well I know myself (especially when it comes to unconscious biases). It’s also given me both focus and an escape of sorts from the global situation I didn’t see coming when I signed up! "
