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Psychology

Embark on the next stage of your educational journey

Key Information

Are you looking to commence a career in Psychology? Begin your journey with us today.

Key information

Postgraduate course

Duration

  • Full time (15-19 months)

Intakes

  • January
  • May
  • September

Location

  • Cambridge

Psychology Overview

ARU College’s Psychology Pre-Master’s pathway is aimed at students looking to progress to one of the prescribed psychology postgraduate degrees at Anglia Ruskin University. Our pre-master’s course in Psychology will provide you with the skills necessary for studying a master’s degree in these fields. It will support you in developing transferable skills that will assist you in your master’s degree and professional life such as, independent learning, research skills, ethics, and analytical skills. Allowing for a smoother transition to your chosen master’s degree within Psychology.

With a master’s in psychology, you will gain an analytical approach to tasks, an understanding of people, and underlying management skills. These are skills highly valued by employers and you could progress into sectors such as health and social care, marketing, management and HR, education, and public sector work. Furthermore, MSc Psychology is accredited by the British Psychological Society (BPS) and during your master’s degree you will acquire all the skills required by the BPS to register with them as a graduate member (in order to be eligible to register you will need an overall pass mark of 50% in your master’s degree).

Pathway Progression 

Please see our International and UK Course Matrix for intake information. 

Stage 1: Pre-master’s in psychology

To meet the requirements for studying the master’s pathways included in this Programme Specification, students’ study four core modules:

Modules

Interactive Learning Skills and Communication

This module aims to help students develop a range of academic and communicative skills necessary for successful study at postgraduate level.

Students will be taught and will practice a range of transferable communicative skills (written and oral) to prepare students for professional life. Students will be encouraged to find useful ways to develop independent learning and encourage students to take responsibility for their personal, academic and professional development.

Research Methods and Skills

This module aims to provide you with a good understanding of research theory and practice, enabling you to understand different qualitative and quantitative research methods.

The development, nature, scope and organisation of research is discussed in the module. You will be taught to define research questions, formulate objectives (organise hypothesis testing where relevant), and set decision criteria. The requirement for underpinning research with theory, using tertiary sources in conducting literature research is discussed. The methods and sources of primary and secondary data are introduced including: survey techniques, assessing data quality, and methods of analysis.

The basic principles and practices of qualitative and quantitative research are analysed. Students will be introduced to a range of scientific and social sciences research methods and be taught to identify which methods are most relevant to meet research objectives.

Psychology and Ethics

This module aims to introduce you to Psychology and Ethics. Students will learn why knowledge of risk management and ethical approval are important for research studies and good professional practice. This module will overview key psychological approaches and current psychological theorists along with an overview of ethical principles and standards developed in the context of psychological theory. Real-world applications of these approaches will also be discussed along with current debates and trends in practice.

Principles of ICT

Students will be introduced to fundamental ICT skills that will be necessary to utilise throughout University level studies. This course will address ICT software and topics as they currently exist, bridging the knowledge gap between various versions of software. Students will use common productivity software as well as internet-based applications.

This module introduces students to the interesting challenges that ICT presents today and covers many anchor points that may serve as a bridge to their interests and lifestyles. These bridges include the technology in their mobile telephones, computing equipment, and entertainment software.

This module takes into account that we will be dealing with students from a wide range of cultures and experience with computers, and successful completion indicates that students have obtained a good understanding of and ability to apply common applications (Ms Word, Excel and Power Point) to document creation, data collation and presentation whilst students will also be made aware of the benefits of using web based applications for information presentation and will be expected to use IT to communicate information effectively in a variety of forms.

You will be required to pass all modules (75 credits) in order to successfully complete the pre-masters course.

Stage 2: Master’s Degree

Location

Cambridge

Related links

For more information about intake semesters and campus location please see our course matrices.

Find out the academic entry requirements for our courses listed by country. Unless stated, requirements are standard across all courses.

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