Empowering Minds: an MSc Psychology Virtual Q&A

Dr Tom Lockhart: BPS accreditation means that when you graduate as long as your grades are high enough you will have chartered-- graduate basis for chartered membership of a British Psychological Society. That means that you can get into specialized training routes particularly in the UK but it is recognized internationally as well. So that's something to check if you're thinking of further study internationally. It can get you into those routes. It also means that your degree was to a certain standard. So forgetting that accreditation as a course, we have to meet the regulatory body standards. We have to be regularly inspected. We have to cover certain things. And we have to ensure that you have the proper training to be a psychologist in the general sense when you graduate. So it's definitely something to look for if you are doing a course in psychology, and it's the reason that we run this course to give people their accreditation. The regulatory body is very strict on that.

You have to have the same graduate outcomes as a campus-based course, and your degree will reflect that. You don't get a certificate that says conversion course online. It's just-- it will just say master's in psychology. So very much parity there. We have to have parity there. It's not a choice of ours. It reminds me of a question earlier that I didn't ask actually which is are there any required face to face elements of the course, and there are not. You can do the whole thing online. That's absolutely fine. If you would like to pop in and see us you're more than welcome to. You still have access to the University campus and the same facilities as face to face students, but there is no mandatory face to face element. You have no requirement to engage with those elements if you don't want to.

It's fantastic that we do have such a diverse range of students coming into the course from backgrounds that a you a more traditional academic roots and backgrounds where as you say the degree was a longer time ago but now they have that excellent wealth of experience in applying what they've learned in those degrees, and they want to channel that experience into a career in psychology. So it's brilliant to have that diversity.

And in terms of what skill set you need and being a conversion course, the skills are going to be very general. It's going to be the ability to think critically, to be able to evaluate and analyze rather than just accept things at face value. It's a skill that we'll work on. But certainly something that you have to be open and encouraging about. The other thing that I would recommend doing actually is having a look at the reading list that I think we're going to send around if that's all right.