Engaging psychology students in real world challenges

As part of a student/staff collaboration to encourage research-focused teaching, two members of staff and two students have come together to develop a module that we think will be extremely useful for our students. Following discussions regarding the kind of things we would like to work on, the students spoke of how they were inspired by examples of modules in Canada where students planned, implemented and evaluated outreach efforts in response to environmental health issues. Our team realised that there was a space where we could develop a module where our 2nd year students could put their psychology and research methods skills to good use in addressing some real world issues in their local communities. The module would start from problems or issues presented by a local stakeholder(s). Students will then work in groups throughout the module to use many disparate resources to plan, design and execute potential solutions to these community issues. The students work would be assessed not only by academics but by the local stakeholders at the end of the module. The intention is that stakeholders benefit from the work done by the students, the students benefit from developing applied psychology skills in real world contexts (and the feeling that work they are developing really matters) and the broader community benefits from a solutions being developed and implemented for key local issues. The next stages for our group are to meet to plan and write the module outline form to be fed into the Undergraduate review in the hope that we can get the module off the ground.

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