Aims of the course:
- To introduce the field of psychology.
- To show participants how psychology can be applied to the understanding of everyday life settings.
- To illustrate 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 outlining various approaches within psychology and their potential application in everyday contexts.
- Participants will be introduced to the breadth of psychology in the first teaching week and will then see how various psychological approaches help our understanding and contribute to explaining human behaviour in the following weeks.
- While each week will draw on multiple psychological disciplines, there will be a different focus each week on one particular approach, to enable a greater depth of learning.
- Participants will discuss the application of psychology in contexts such as personal relationships, the work place and in health.
- 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: 4-10 January 2021
Teaching Weeks: 11 January-14 February 2021
Feedback Week: 15-21 February 2021
Orientation week
Our first week aims to get you familiar with your Virtual Learning Environment, and we will make sure that you are able to access all of the materials and resources that will be used throughout the course. You will meet your tutor for the first time, and get to know your fellow students.
Week 1: Introduction to the field of Psychology
In this week we shall introduce selected key approaches within Psychology and look at how different approaches can be applied to the study of selected everyday life contexts. We shall see how Psychology can be used to describe, explain, and predict behaviour, and examine one classic study in detail.
Week 2: The workplace
This week will look at the importance of work in our lives, and will look in particular at the topic of motivation in the workplace. How can Psychology help us to understand our motivation(s) to work, and why are employers interested in increasing our motivation? As well as taking an historical perspective, we shall look at contemporary theories which aim to explain what motivates us at work.
Week 3: The supermarket and consumer behaviour
This week examines consumer behaviour using a supermarket environment as a context within which theory can be applied. Consumer psychology will be used to study various dimensions (e.g. environmental, cognitive, behavioural), and we will explore how and why we can be persuaded to spend more time in the supermarket and spend more than we intended.
Week 4: Healthy living
This week explores the notion of healthy living from a multi-dimensional perspective, and asks whether an understanding of psychology can promote individual health. It explores various theories within health psychology, as well as linking to other approaches (e.g. psychobiology, counselling, cognitive).
Week 5: Personal relationships
This week looks at key interpersonal topics and contexts (family, work, dyadic, group). It introduces social psychology and its application to the study of personal relationships. There is a review of how personal relationships can be looked at using other psychology disciplines (e.g. developmental, occupational, health).
Week 6: What next?
Feedback and future directions... What about other contexts? Education, communication, crime, environment, leisure...these are all areas that we can look at in future courses. In this final week your tutor shall briefly look at how psychology can look at these areas, as well as giving a summary of the course and providing individual feedback to each student.
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 course has far surpassed my expectations. I have particularly enjoyed reading the forum contributions from colleagues who live and work abroad. These have given me an invaluable insight as to the problems they encounter compared to mine"
"Thank you, Manjit, for your valuable and prompt feedback on my contributions. I have learnt so much and the suggested readings have encouraged me to read further into the topics."
"This was a very well designed course that introduced me to the key topics of psychology in an engaging and informative way"
"The content was informative and challenging, and the discussions engaging and interesting"
