This week we're joined by Dr Elle Boag, head of psychology at the University of Essex Online, to explore the MSc Psychology programme. Dr Boag breaks down the structure, key modules, research project, and the type of students who thrive on the course
Participants
- Emily Slade - podcast producer and host, Prospects
- Elle Boag - head of psychology, University of Essex Online
Transcript
Emily Slade: Hello and welcome back to Future You, the podcast brought to you by graduate careers experts, Prospects. I'm your host, Emily Slade and in this episode I chat to the University of Essex online about their MSc in psychology.
Dr Elle Boag: My name is Dr Elle Boag and I'm the Head of Psychology at University of Essex Online.
Emily Slade: Perfect. So if you're able to tell us about the course?
Dr Elle Boag: The course is wholly online and it is to an extent modular. So people can pick up modules at a time, but they have to be done in a chronological order. So with the Masters in Psychology programme, which at some point we would aim to be accredited with a BPS, so we're going through that process at the moment. This is a minimum of a two-year course and roughly covers a variety of psychological projects and topics. So it introduces people to psychology and research methods, It looks at development across the lifespan for humankind. It looks at critical social psychology, advanced research methods, because research methods underpin all of psychology, psychobiology and neuroscience, psychology skills and employability. And it all culminates in a year-long psychology research project, which is empirical. And primarily, we want people to use primary research where they're collecting their own data. But on certain occasions, this can be done secondarily. So using secondary sources, but there has to be an empirical element within it. This can be quantitative or qualitative. So you can look at statistics and numbers and do questionnaires. Alternatively, you could do interviews or focus groups. or do something more qualitative and use different types of analyses. But all of these things you'll be introduced to because there's no requirement to study psychology at master's degree to have a pre-master's, so to have a degree in psychology at all, which is why we start with principles of psychology and psychological methods. and research methods, sorry, so that we can get everybody on the same sort of platform as to the history and the constructs within psychology itself.
Emily Slade: Yeah, fantastic. That's brilliant. So that leads nicely on to who would suit the course.
Dr Elle Boag: Well, anybody really. I think that the people who would be more interested in it are those that have a personal professional interest in business psychology or psychology in particular. The course explores key psychological theories that can be applied to a real broad range of subject areas. This may be at work, it may be at home, it may be in your family life. Typically people will use this to support their career prospects and or to go on to do further study. So people will learn how to increase efficiency, communication, understanding of how structurally we fit together as a society, family units, assess their own performance and communication as well as effectively be able to motivate themselves and other And throughout all of our programmes, we have quite a strong focus on employability. And this will be supported in part, I suppose, by the research methods and statistics, because it helps you to build a portfolio of skills that are transferable across the workplace, across society, across all sorts of domains. that will eventually and hopefully support further career development.
Emily Slade: Yeah, perfect. So speaking of, what are the career prospects following this course?
Dr Elle Boag: Well, you can pretty much do anything. I know it sounds quite glib to say that, but psychology is the scientific quasi-scientific study of humankind, human behaviour, motivations, why do we do what we do? Why do other people do what they do? Because we're all natural psychologists to a degree and we want to know a little bit about ourselves or people that we love or we want to understand why the world works the way that it works. With that in mind, having a broad psychology postgraduate degree will allow you the opportunity to explore those constructs on a deeper level. And it will apply to any career. So because this is not accredited as of yet, should it be accredited, you would qualify for GBC training, which means you could get graduate basis for chartership and train as a chartered psychologist. But that's still in the pipeline. Currently as it stands, it isn't. but it does not prevent people from going on and pursuing careers at work that may have a psychological bent. We note that a lot of the students that we have are international students and lots of... The international students already work full-time anyway, so this is a means of generating further career prospects, going up the corporate ladder, as it were, and applying their understanding of human behaviour, well-being and relationships in a means of increasing opportunities in HR, in PR, in a variety of different settings.
Emily Slade: Perfect. So in terms of the course, what support is available for students?
Dr Elle Boag: Well, there's student support. So everybody is allocated a student support advisor with a psychology background on enrolment, who they can contact when they have any queries, any questions, if they've got any pastoral or academic concerns. And they'll be signposted on to disability advice should they need some additional support in terms of their mental health and wellbeing or even their academic support. They may need a support summary in place, they may have had one in a previous institution. They may not even know that they need one but it might be something that might be worth being assessed should they be falling behind or finding it a bit more challenging. There's also study skills and this is available to all students at University of Essex Online and they are excellent sources of ensuring that you are meeting the standards of writing that are required because as a psychology subject we have formatting which is APA and it's quite stringent, it's quite strict and you are marked against it, but there is plenty of resources available to support that. There's also access to the University of Essex online library. So when this is the University of Essex's library, but it's their online resources, journals, all sorts of blogs, all sorts of journal entries, there's peer support, there's also WhatsApp groups, lots of students like a WhatsApp group where they can study collaboratively together. But we also run one assessment, at least one assessment across the course that is a collaborative learning question where you learn from one another, you feed back to one another all the time and it's something that we certainly encourage.
Emily Slade: Perfect. And you've briefly touched on it, but can we look at the learning, teaching and assessment methods for the course?
Dr Elle Boag: Yes. So the learning is wholly online. You would be in your own place of work, home, somewhere quiet, hopefully. where you don't have dogs running past all the time, being very distracting. But we do understand that the majority of our students also work full time and or have family commitments. So they're fitting studying in with everything else that they have to do. So they are, all of our lessons are hosted on the virtual learning environment or the VLE. Instead of traditional campuses, this means that you'll have access to materials 24-7, 365 days a year. And this includes things such as multimedia lecture casts, and this is made-up of written content, short videos, animations, audio recordings, infographics, short tests and mini assignments. And these aren't like traditional lectures where you just talked at for an hour. These are a combination of all of these things keep your mind going because we all know that the memory span and the mind isn't easy to occupy for long periods of time. There's discussion forums for you to chat about your course with peers, live seminar sessions, there's question and answer sessions you could also have with your tutorials, with your tutors on a one-to-one basis. It may be that they offer an hourly online question and answer session too. A comprehensive e-library, as I said, which includes textbooks and academic journals. There's support from academic staff and the support team. The assessments themselves, there's no proctored exams, there's no exams at all, it's 100% coursework. So everything will be done through a series of different types of assignment. So this can be engaging in discussion forums, in modules, completing reflective journals, delivering online presentations, or by submitting longer pieces such as essays or research reports. Importantly, we're committed to providing frequent and transparent feedback in a number of ways. So one of our One of the things that we focus on is ensuring that our assessment criteria are designed to be transparent and simple. Not simple in the way as, you know, they're oversimplified, but they're easy to digest and understand. If you don't, if any questions do arise, then students are always encouraged to talk to their tutors. The students will always be aware of current provisional grades right from the start of the programme, so they know the grading criteria, they know what the minimum requirement is to meet each of those benchmarks. Students will be able to view marks clearly in their grade books whenever they log on to the learning platform. There's A seven-day turnaround for marking and feedback of assessed work, which is very quick, and there's regular contact with the student support team with whom you can, with whom you or the student. can discuss any concerns as soon as they arise. And my advice to all students coming onto the course is if you do have a concern or you think you have a concern, just contact student support. They're always there to listen. As an online learning experience, there's a number of materials that will be available as well. So these are high quality, delivered via the VLE. On average, the learning experience will include 40% directed learning, which is including participation in tutor-led discussion and seminars, completing interactive exercises on the VLE and watching videos, lecture casts, and in that time also includes the ability to book appointments with module tutors during their office hours, which will be found on the VLE. It'll be very clear on your module VLEs. Self-directed learning is 30% of the course. So this means undertaking wider research and research in the area of study to develop students' understanding of the subject area. And it's really important that this is engaged with because the more you read, the more you know, the more you know, the better you do. And then 30% is assessment. And this is time spent preparing and completing the assignments and activities that contribute towards the overall assessment grade. So typically, we suggest that a minimum of 15 to 20 hours per module per week is used for assessments and learning experience.
Emily Slade: Yeah, perfect. Thank you. Is there anything else that you'd like to mention about the course that we haven't covered?
Dr Elle Boag: Yes, firstly, the duration. So it's typically two years, but can be more because it's modular and because we recognise that the student body aren't necessarily what one would consider be traditional at home studying full time. And they do have lives that are at times barriers to their learning journeys, we understand that might be longer. But we say on average sort of two to three years. And so this is a guide and it is just a rough guide for how long it will take, but not to overstretch yourself. I think it may be shorter or longer depending on your speed of study and all the options. that are chosen during the module activity. The academic year is organised into modules and there are five entry points per year. So it runs on a carrot cell system. You have also, if you should fail, you have another two opportunities to resubmit work at a capped grade. The academic staff are really core in this. Now, the tutors that we have are independently employed tutors and they are experts in their field. So at all points you can be confident as a student enrolling on the MSc that you are being taught by somebody who is a subject specialist in that particular area and domain of psychology. So if you have questions, ask questions. These are often tutors who are researchers in the domain as well. So they may well talk about their own research. They may talk about the research more globally. I also encourage students to read research from their home countries, should they not be from the UK, and bring them to class for discussion. because we are very keen on ensuring that our courses have a global reach. There's also lots of information about the key members of staff on the University of Essex online website. Finally, I'd like to say that the quality assurance of the course is first rate. I would say that because I'm head of department. But we follow QAA standards to the absolute letter. We follow benchmark statements for psychology to the letter and we also, as much as we can, and certainly within the remit of not being an accredited course, we still follow BPS guidelines in terms of ethics, ethical procedures, research methods and the core content that we deliver.
Emily Slade: Perfect, brilliant, thank you. If any prospective students have questions, can they reach out to you or is there someone that they should contact?
Dr Elle Boag: I would suggest in the first instance to contact the admissions team. If they have any specific questions about the MSc Psychology, Perhaps they should reach out to the program team. They can send me an e-mail at l.bogue at kaplan.com and I will signpost them to the most appropriate source of information if I can't answer any of their questions. Because all the information you need is on the website and it's all very freely available, including the most up-to-date fees. There's also an alumni discount for those who have studied with us before or studied at the University of Essex.
Emily Slade: Brilliant, thank you so, much for your time today.
Emily Slade: Thanks again to Dr Elle for their time. For more information on the course you can check out the show notes below. If you enjoyed the episode, do feel free to leave us a review on Apple or Spotify. Thank you, as always for listening and good luck on your journey to future you.
Notes on transcript
This transcript was produced using a combination of automated software and human transcribers and may contain errors. The audio version is definitive and should be checked before quoting.
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