Professional & life skills I

Full course description

The professional and life skills (PLS) modules in your bachelor will present a series of teaching and learning activities that will help you develop skills and mental habits for 21st century academics. You will collect outputs of these activities in a portfolio, on which you will reflect individually and with your mentor as your study progresses. The PLS modules bring together a number of learning arcs related to diversity skills, ethics, self-reflection and personal growth, academic writing and presenting, and both specific (e.g., psychodiagnostic assessment skills) and general professional skills (e.g., teamwork and project management skills). These learning arcs are aligned with each other, as well as with the SICT and Core modules. For instance, when you write a personality diagnostic report, you will hone professional psychodiagnostic skills, writing skills, diversity skills, statistical analysis skills while building on personality psychological knowledge acquired in the core module.

This module will start with an introduction to the collaborative and self-directed skills you need in our Problem-Based Learning environment. These guide you to become independent and enterprising problem solvers. In order to achieve this goal, teaching at UM extends beyond the traditional lecture-based education. You will often work in small groups on concrete problems. As a team, you analyse problems, attempt to understand the underlying theories and learn to apply your knowledge to realistic situations. To perform well in this educational system, it is important to understand its background and key elements. Therefore, in the first weeks of your study you will familiarise yourselves with Problem-Based Learning, communication skills essential for learning in groups, teambuilding, and with the facilities and online services for students at FPN (e.g., library support for developing information literacy).

Communication

Critical reading and writing assignments are dispersed throughout the year. The writing learning arc starts with identifying the basic building blocks of a text. In period 1, aligned with critical thinking and argumentation assignments in SICT 1, you will analyze and identify the basic argument structure of texts that are relevant for the core module. Subsequent assignments in future periods focus on formulating pieces of academic texts, honing both information literacy and writing skills.

In period 2, you will provide feedback on already written sections of text keeping in mind the academic standard and APA guidelines. Moreover, you will start writing the first sections of a paper yourself as well as building your own arguments. These writing assignments will be linked to the data that you will collect and analysed in the parallel learning lines.

In period 3, reading skills are at the center of attention when you read a book from a list of historically significant works compiled by FPN staff members. Staff members have adopted a book that they felt had a deep impact on their field of study and their personal, academic, or professional development. At the end of the period, you will discuss the contents of the book with peers who read the same book and with the teacher/researcher who adopted it. To maintain argumentation skills, you will visualize one of the book chapters in an argument map after a deep read of the chapter of your choosing. In the process, you will acquire a historical perspective on the field of psychology, and get to learn more about what life is like at academia from your living library person.

In period 4, personality diagnostic skills will be practiced by writing reports, working on information literacy (including the development of a critical stance towards less scientific vs. more scientific/clinically applied measures and evaluating them accordingly). Additionally, observation and critical thinking exercises (identifying fake news, writing a scientific rebuttal, and delivering a presentation on Sustainable Development Goals) will complete this period.

Finally, in period 5, three writing assignments linked to course content (viz. psychopathology) invite you to write an informal/laymen paper on the impact of disorders on society, an academic argument on the disease/choice model of addiction, and an argument on the impact of ecoanxiety on well-being.

Professional skills: Observing behavior

Psychology aims to draw conclusions about human behaviour. To do so, these behaviours must first be identified. Behavioural observation is one method of identification and involves collecting data that can be used to draw conclusions about certain behaviours. Psychologists in training must therefore become familiar with methods of behavioural observation. In period 3, you will discover how to draw systematic observations in a naturalistic setting (e.g., studying social play behavior in primates).

Professional skills: Clinical and psychodiagnostic skills

Throughout the year, you will complete brief assignments that will hone your psychological conversation technique skills, e.g., attending behavior and non-selective listening skills (e.g., encouraging); selective listening skills (e.g., asking questions, paraphrasing, summarizing and reflection of feelings); regulating skills, and dealing with intense emotions. These assignments will be offered in TrainTool, software that allows for peer-to-peer training of communication skills. In year 2, you will further develop your psychological communication skills, focusing on conversations that aim to clarify a problem. Eventually, some of you will acquire mentoring skills in year 2 and serve as psychological wellbeing coaches for first year bachelor students in your fifth semester.

In period 4, assignments connect to the social and personality psychological themes in the core course. You will critically investigate personality assessment in terms of its scientific (objective) value, moving from tools that are considered less scientific to tools that are more acknowledged in the field (and have been validated accordingly). You will progress from reflecting on and observing healthy individuals towards reflecting on and observing clinical profiles. Finally, in the context of individual differences and personality, you will progress from self-assessment of your own personality (Myers-Briggs type indicator) towards observing and assessing another individual’s personality (HEXACO), finishing with investigating on clinical profiles (e.g. Dark Triad Test).

In period 5, assignments focus on developing diagnostic skills such as administering, scoring and interpreting instruments frequently used to express experimental and clinical paradigms (or function domains) quantitatively. The key function domains for this module are memory, executive functions and attention. After learning about experimental possibilities and clinical applications of each instrument, you will practice using these instruments on your peers and experience first-hand the rules, successes and frustrations each instrument brings with it. After practicing these tests individually, you will analyse a complex case study describing a client with cognitive complaints who takes a neuropsychological exam. You will explore whether an underlying disorder may cause the complaints.

Life skills

Life skills encompass transversal skills and associated graduate attributes increasingly valued by employers and society at large. Perhaps more importantly, these skills facilitate personal growth and help individuals find a sense of purpose. They include diversity skills, critical self-reflection, creative problem-solving, systems thinking, interpersonal and teamwork skills. Associated graduate attributes include virtues such as curiosity, integrity, resilience, courage, and empathy.

In the first year, the focus of educational activities targeting life skills will be on personal development through character strength (CS) exercises, improvisational theater, and self-reflection in a portfolio. Improvisation exercises are aimed at enhancing resilience and one's ability to connect with peers. CS exercises stimulate the development and application of signature strengths by focusing on strength identification, strength exploration, perspective taking (intercultural awareness/intersectionality) and strength use/application in novel contexts. A privilege exercise will make you aware of diversity, positionality and intersectionality, as will an interview that you will conduct with a culturally distant member of society. Additionally, as you will be building a portfolio over the course of the academic year and systematically asking for and receiving feedback on your work, you will engage with constructive feedback techniques to facilitate your personal and professional development.

Self-reflection on both personal and academic development will be documented in a personal portfolio throughout the entire bachelor programme. Through continuous reflection you enhance self-awareness by learning about others and yourselves, by accessing your thoughts, by regulating emotions and by focusing attention to perform better socially, emotionally and academically. For instance, a lifecrafting intervention will help you reflect on purpose and meaning in life (based on personal values and passion). You will make concrete plans to work toward this purpose in a structured manner, which will help guide personal and professional development in the second bachelor year.

The portfolio should stimulate critical reflection on your progress at the competency level, not the module level. As meaningful learning happens when you habitually try to make sense of your study experiences, you will regularly update your portfolio, share and discuss your reflections with peers, and send a written reflection to your mentor at the end of the year. You will also discuss your life as a beginning student with a third year peer, who will have received relevant training for becoming a student well-being coach in their second year. Discussions with third year students (near-peer mentoring) during the first semester are expected to help you find your bearings in a new academic learning environment.

There is no assessment for this module. You will only receive feedback on completed assignments.