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@salfordpsych engaging people online twitter

Five Reasons to use Twitter

By Hannah Smith a.k.a. @hannahbubble on Twitter

I loved curating the @salfordpsych account last week. I wanted to take part as I think there needs to be a greater sense of community within the Psychology department at Salford, and I want to contribute to that. Anyone who is thinking about curating should definitely have a go, using the @salfordpsych account instead of my own for a week really made me focus on ensuring my tweets were personal yet suitable for a professional audience. I do believe that Twitter is a great tool for networking, not just within the Psychology department but outside of it as well. One thing I think @salfordpsych could do next would be to collaborate on a magazine type publication, similar to The Looking Glass from the Institute of Psychiatry which I tweeted about. This could give us an opportunity to reach people who aren’t on social media, as well as reaching a wider audience within the university e.g. other programmes.

 

If you aren’t on Twitter yet, why not?! Here are my top five reasons why I think you should be.

  1. Twitter is a great place to continue discussion which may have been raised in lectures, for example using a hash tag such as #devpsy for a module on developmental psychology.
  2. Following on from this, it is also a good place to ask your fellow students questions, or even your lecturers!
  3. If you present yourself as professionally-minded and emphasise your interest in psychology, Twitter is a useful tool for developing connections with people working in the industry.
  4. You might even get work experience or a job offer from this! For example @sophcoulson tweeted last week about her wish to gain a post as a research assistant, which will hopefully lead to an offer of some work.
  5. Finally, follow any interesting accounts that you find. I follow lots of psychology-related Twitter accounts and have found research I can use in essays, inspiration for my dissertation and also some ideas for my career path.

If I haven’t managed to convince you, check out the @salfordpsych account and have a look for yourself at the sorts of things you can find on Twitter.

Top Tweet of the Week:

 

 

Categories
community creative engaging people enterprise learning volunteering

Volunteering opportunity with CARISMA and Psychology at Salford

By Jenna Condie

CARISMA is a local charity based in inner south Manchester and is one of the three charities officially supported by the University of Salford.  CARISMA do amazing work in their aim to create life chances for young people in their communities.  Some projects that you might already be familiar with are the radio station Peace FM and the Guns into Goods project (in collaboration with the University of Salford).

CARISMA are developing an educational initiative called FACT: Fathers and Children Together.  They would like input from Salford psychology students in the designing of appropriate educational content and social activities for fathers and their children to do together.  The aim is to strengthen father-child relationships.  The content will be available digitally via the FACT website.  How social media can be utilised to build supportive social networks that empower fathers to have a positive impact on their children’s lives will also be explored.

You will work in a creative team supervised by Jenna Condie and Sarah Norgate.  The main communication channel for this project will be a Facebook group to support flexible and distance working.  Project communication via Facebook also enables CARISMA representatives to consult on the development of the educational content and social activities in ‘real time’.

Are you ready to apply your psychological knowledge to a ‘real-world’ project that really matters?  If so, we would love to have you on board.  Working on FACT is a great opportunity for those of you considering developmental, educational, and teaching careers pathways.  There may also be potential here for the development of suitable topics for your dissertation research.

Dennis Philips from CARISMA will be visiting us on Wednesday 17th April 2013 at 1.30pm to introduce the FACT initiative and invite you to join the team.  If you would like to attend, please get in touch with Jenna Condie (Email: j.m.condie@salford.ac.uk) who will provide you with the necessary details.

 

Categories
placement psych and counselling psych and criminology psychology survey undergraduate

The Findings: Psychology Placement Module Questionnaire

By Lorna Paterson

At Psychology at Salford, we are committed to increasing our students’ employability within the graduate marketplace.  A few months ago, many of you completed a questionnaire asking for your feedback about the possibility of a psychology placement module. All your feedback has been considered, summarised and is presented below. Your feedback has been instrumental in establishing a task group to examine the possibility of introducing a placement module in the near future.  Exactly how this may take shape is currently being explored.

Findings from the placement module questionnaire:

An overwhelming 95.5% of respondents (N = 109) were interested in a psychology placement module.  Over two thirds preferred the idea of a block placement rather than a day release model. In regards to which semester the placement module would run, the preference was not clear as all three options (Semester 1, Semester 2, across both semesters) performed about equally.

The most popular placement sectors were; Health and Clinical (88% showed interest), Mental Health (76% showed interest) and Voluntary (76% showed interest). The least popular placement option was an academic internship (45.8% expressed an interest).

Over half of the respondents (56.9%) expressed an interest in completing a placement module over doing a dissertation. However in order to fulfil the requirements for a BPS Accredited Degree Classification, an independent piece of research must be carried out.

What we still need to clarify is 1) How a placement module could be delivered successfully, 2) Health & Clinical options were the most popular however, health psychology and clinical psychology are distinctly different disciplines. We hope to set up a further survey via this blog , to gain further information about your interest in health and clinical placement options. Watch this space for further developments.  .

Finally, a visual, qualitative representation of your open responses has been included below highlighting why a placement module matters to you.

wordle

If you would like to provide further feedback on the possibility of a psychology placement module, please contact Lorna Paterson on l.paterson@salford.ac.uk or Linda Dubrow-Marshall on l.dubrow-marshall@salford.ac.uk.

 

Categories
@salfordpsych community learning psychology twitter undergraduate

Tweeting as @salfordpsych: Q&A with Sophie Coulson

Last week we launched our collaborative Twitter account @salfordpsych.  Every week, a different person tweets for the department – students, lecturers and researchers.  Sophie Coulson, a second year BSc (Hons) Psychology undergraduate, was first up as @salfordpsych and had the account off to a flying start.  Below she reflects on her week and what she hopes @salfordpsych can do for the psychology community at Salford and beyond.  An archive of Sophie’s week as @salfordpsych can be viewed here.

______

Q.        How did you find your week curating the @salfordpsych account?

sophcoulsonA.        At first I was a bit intimidated but after the first few hours I absolutely loved my week of tweeting as @salfordpsych. There was so much support and enthusiasm from everyone involved and it was such a buzz to see people retweeting or favouriting something that I had posted.

Q.        What motivated you to be a part of the initiative?

A.        Encouragement from our lecturer, Jenna Condie, but also my belief that we need to communicate more within the university and with others in the world of psychology.  The idea of having someone different tweeting each week is a fantastic one. It brings so many perspectives and promotes input from those who might not usually have a wide or diverse audience.

Q.        What did you enjoy about it?

A.        The part I most enjoyed was researching online to find articles or links that might be interesting to others. I came across such a lot of fascinating information that I wouldn’t usually make the effort to find.

Q.        Was there anything you didn’t enjoy?

A.        I should probably lie about this to avoid sounding incredibly sad but I got a bit addicted, so the least enjoyable times were those when I couldn’t get online.

Q.        Favourite twitter moment(s) of the week?

A.        Every time someone retweeted something I had posted I felt irrationally pleased! Knowing that someone out there liked or valued the information was very rewarding.

Q.        Least favourite twitter moment of the week?

A.        I followed a few people who I thought would like to be involved but they didn’t follow back. That was a bit disheartening.

Q.        How can social media play a role in learning?

A.        I believe social media opens up so many possibilities. It’s a way of discovering things that may not have even occurred to you before. Questions can be asked and immediate responses received from people who never would have been accessible before social media. It removes or at least lowers the boundaries of location, education, class and age.

Q.        Why do you use Twitter?

A.        I haven’t personally tweeted much because, to be honest, I don’t feel anyone would be interested. However, in my part time work with the university’s Student Life service, I tweet a lot, mainly to provide others with information. I suppose I see it as a more professional than sociable way of communicating.

Q.        Would you recommend being a curator to other students?

A.        Definitely!! Apart from the obvious benefit of social media management looking good on your CV, it’s fun! It’s also a bit of a self-confidence boost and is a great way of discovering aspects of psychology that you may not usually give priority to.

Q.        Any tips for future curators?

A.        I know it’s a cliché but just be yourself.  That’s the whole idea. Different personalities, perspectives, styles and interests are what this is about. I’m really looking forward to reading tweets of all future curators.

Q.        What would you like to see @salfordpsych do next?

A.        I would love to see @salfordpsych grow and inspire other university groups to create similar accounts. I particularly like the idea of researchers, lecturers and students working and communicating together. Often they are so remote from each other and divided by position. I think @salfordpsych could also be used to build more links with the Salford community, creating opportunities for students, staff and residents.

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Thank you Sophie for an excellent first week on Twitter. Sophie passed the tweet-baton to Hannah Smith, who is currently tweeting as @salfordpsych about what it is like to be the final year of her BSc (Hons) Psychology and Counselling.  Check it out here.

If you would like to curate the @salfordpsych account, please get in touch with Jenna Condie on j.m.condie@salford.ac.uk.  A rota of upcoming weeks is available here.  Also, there is more information about our Twitter collaboration on the ‘we are all @salfordpsych’ page.

 

Categories
joint hons psych and counselling psych and criminology satisfaction

Top ratings for joint Psychology programmes with Criminology and Counselling at Salford

By Dr Ashley Weinberg

 

Psychology at Salford’s joint Psychology programmes featured in the UK’s top quartile last year and programme leaders are hoping for a repeat of this success in 2013. The 2012 feedback showed that 100% of students in the final year of the BSc (Hons) Psychology and Criminology and 94% of those studying for the BSc (Hons) Psychology and Counselling were satisfied with their courses. These represented increases from 2011 and although it would be mathematically tricky to improve further on these positive results, the programme leaders were delighted to see students give such high ratings for the standards of teaching, how most students felt their course had helped their personal development, and that the academic support, organisation and learning resources were highly valued too.

For further details about either of these programmes, please contact admissions tutor Anne Pearson (a.pearson1@salford.ac.uk; tel: 0161 295 0036)

Categories
events facilities learning taster event teaching undergraduate

Psychology Taster Event 2013 Reviewed

mary seacole

By Jenna Condie

Last week, we welcomed applicants who currently hold an offer to study one of our psychology undergraduate courses (starting September 2013) to a Psychology Taster Event.  The idea of the day was to help applicants make their decisions about which university to go to and which course to embark on.  Hopefully our Taster Event gave applicants a better insight into the areas of psychology that they would cover at degree level and our interactive approach to teaching psychology here at Salford.

Attendees were welcomed in our main lecture theatre by Anne Pearson, our Admissions Tutor for all Salford Psychology undergraduate courses.  Next up was a taster lecture with Dr Ashley Weinberg who introduced attendees to the area of emotional intelligence, an area of psychology we specialise in at Salford.  Tweets from the University’s press office relating to Ashley’s talk are below.

tweets EI

[View the story “Psychology Taster Event 2013” on Storify]After the taster lecture, attendees were invited to a number of demonstrations in the Psychology department.  Ruth Laidler, a psychology tutor and PhD researcher, introduced attendees to Developmental Psychology and child development with a video demonstration.  She introduced attendees to Jean Piaget’s work and a Piagetian style task called Conservation.  Students were informed that they would study developmental psychology in their first and second years as it is a core area specified by the BPS accreditation. Also, should they want to do so, students can take an option module in Educational Psychology in the final year of their study.

Lecturers Dr Lynne Marrow and Janine Crosbie had a number of Biological Psychology demonstrations for attendees to try out.  Our guests participated in a number of activities from measuring their Galvanic Skin Response to examining visual illusions.  The handout Lynne and Janine created for the event is below.

Introducing biological psychology handout from SalfordPsych

In our psychology computer suite Dr Adam Galpin introduced students to Cognitive Psychology. Adam first demonstrated how little of the world people pay attention to by showing how we can miss things changing in front of our eyes (“change blindness”). He then described one of the projects our students get stuck into to test their own hypotheses about change blindness. The applicants also came up with great ideas for further experiments, so we’ll look forward to testing them when they arrive!

There was a mental health talk with Dr Linda Dubrow-Marshall and a final year student Ashley Carrick, which provided the opportunity for interesting and important debates around mental health and well-being.  Attendees also participated in a true or false quiz on mental health.  Here’s one of the questions:

Among teenagers, the rates of depression have increased by how much over the past 25 years? 

  • 18%
  • 35%
  • 70%

What do you think? (the correct answer is at the end of this post).

Dr Ashley Weinberg returned to demonstrate the kinds of social psychological experiments that are possible in our observation suite which has a two-way mirror.  In CSI style, our guests observed two people and tried to work out whether they were telling the truth by interpreting their non-verbal communication.  This demonstration highlighted some of the challenges of understanding people and social behaviour.

tweets observation

The day closed with refreshments and the opportunity for attendees to get to know one another and ask staff and current students any questions.  We would like to thank our students – Sophie Coulson, Hannah Smith, Ashley Carrick, Rhona Robinson and Nicol Herta – for welcoming prospective students to Psychology at Salford.  We would also like to thank attendees who completed our feedback form too.  It is great to know that they enjoyed the day and the welcoming atmosphere. We now know that attendees would have liked a little more time in each of the demonstrations.  We will definitely make sure that happens in future Taster Events.

On that note, we will be organising more Psychology Taster Events in the future. In the meantime, we also have an Open Lecture Series starting this week on the 5th March 2013.  The open lectures are all first year psychology lectures where you can attend with current Salford psychology students and experience university study and campus life.

If you have any questions, would like to attend one of our events, or would like information about our courses, please contact Anne Pearson (Admissions Tutor) on a.pearson1@salford.ac.uk

Answer: 70% – Source: Time to Change

Categories
applied psychology pain psychology seminar series reflection

Reflections on Presenting for the Psychology Seminar Series

By Lorna Paterson

Last Thursday, I presented my research for the first time to my peers and a couple of students (literally. Thank you both for coming). I did have some nerves however, I treated it like a usual lecture and I was confident about the information on the slides (see below); so I knew I was the expert in the room.

 

Psychology seminar series lorna paterson from SalfordPsych

The turnout wasn’t fantastic but that meant we were able to have more discussion around certain points and I could be a little more informal. I ended up quite enjoying it and think I created a very good impression with my colleagues, or at least that’s the feedback I’ve had.

This is the first time I have presented my prospective PhD data. Believe it or not, I lack confidence about my own work and writing. The PhD has been a long, arduous, individual learning curve and continues to highlight more of my own learning gaps. To have such a positive response from those who attended has been a much appreciated confidence boost.

P.S.  Do you realise the series acronym spells out SPSS? It really does underpin psychology.

Contact Details: l.paterson@salford.ac.uk

Salford Psychology Seminar Series