And, following on from my last post, the course has ten learning outcomes listed in the Studay and Assessment Guide. One of these is:
‘Work with others to carry out the stages of drafting research proposals, data collection, analysis and interpretation.’

Students are told:
‘You cannot pass this course unless you submit a project proposal to the ethics panel’.
This is also mentioned in the Senior Tutor Notes (2006)
‘students will fail the course if they don’t jointly submit the prpject proposal form.’

Every so often, I investigate which aspects of group work the students on the course I am studying need to experience in order to get BPS accreditation. Having spent some time looking this information up, I always lose it again – so here it is, stored safely.

The QAA Subject Benchmark Statement for Psychology lists ten generic skills. It can be found at
http://www.qaa.ac.uk/academicinfrastructure/benchmark/statements/Psychology07.pdf

Generic skills
5.5 On graduating with an honours degree in psychology, students should be able to:
● engage in effective teamwork
● be sensitive to contextual and interpersonal factors. The complexity of the factors that shape behaviour and social interaction will be familiar to psychology graduates and will make them more aware of the basis of problems and interpersonal conflict. They should also be more sensitive to the importance of enhancing cooperation to maximise the effectiveness of individual skills as shown in group work and team-building.

In September 2008, the BPS published ‘Quality Assurance Policies and Practice for First Qualifications in Psychology’.
http://www.bps.org.uk/downloadfile.cfm?file_uuid=DB57A883-1143-DFD0-7ECF-67BFDD0107AC&ext=pdf
This specifies that

‘The empirical practical component will normally involve the completion of a psychology project at Honours level. Exceptionally, other equivalent forms of empirical practical work in psychology may also be deemed appropriate, if delivered at Honours level (as defined by the Framework for Higher Education Qualifications, or equivalent frameworks). The project (or equivalent) must be  passed and cannot be condoned/compensated. […] it must be demonstrated that students complete independent practical work at H level which includes:
● where appropriate, collaborating effectively with colleagues, participants and outside agencies.’

‘All students must be advised that, in order to be eligible for the GBR, they are required to successfully complete the empirical psychology project, or the equivalent practical components of the programme.’

‘collaboration should be recognised as a state of social engagement that, on any given occasion, is more or less active and more or less effectively resourced. So, collaborators may vary in their concern to create shared understandings; and their circumstances of joint activity may vary in how readily they permit such achievements to be brought off. The challenge is to discover how discourse is mobilised in the service of creating joint reference; to see how what is created gets used as a platform for futher exploration; and to see how the material conditions of problem-solving can be more or less friendly towards efforts after this mutuality.’

Crook, C. (1994). Computers and the collaborative experience of learning. London: Routledge. Page 225.

I’ve been wasting a lot of time numbering and renumbering the figures in my chapter – so I finally spent some time looking up how to it automatically. Go to the Insert menu and select Caption is the answer. Caption doesn’t come up automatically on my Insert menu – but it is buried within the system.

Phew. Job done. Now, why didn’t I bother to look that up weeks ago?

Oh, and as a follow-up, the Insert menu also allows you to add cross references. What a useful facility 🙂

This is a reference post – to remind me how to do something fiddly if I have to do it again.

I have JPG pictures of some of the FirstClass postings which make up my data. As I’m making reference to colour, highlighting, typography and layout I have to keep them as pictures rather than copying the text across. But that involves changing all the names, the course names, the group names and identifying details – plus numbering all the lines so that my data analysis is clear.

I’ve put the line numbers in boxes with height 0p7 and width 0p8.68. The numbers are Times bold, 6pt on 7.2pt, with inset spacing 0p2 all around them. The step-and-repeat measurements change from posting to posting but generally the first gap is 1p2, other gaps in the heading are 1.0, the gap from header to greeting is 1p8, the gap between paragraphs is 1p2 and the text is 0p8. When editing FirstClass postings, remember that they’re mostly written in Arial.

Mercer, N., & Edwards, D. (1989). Common knowledge: the development of understanding in the classroom: Routledge.