Psychological Citizenship Project: From Problem to Solution

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This module will invite students to become more psychologically literate, i.e. to be able to apply psychological science to complex professional/societal problems. In doing so, students will gather relevant insights from one or more applied psychological disciplines (e.g., work and organizational psychology, educational psychology, health psychology, legal psychology, clinical neuropsychology). A series of presentations, delivered by the students, will introduce these disciplines. In addition, students will work in small teams together with stakeholders outside academia on authentic, locally meaningful or wicked problems (related to, for instance, climate action, diversity, migration, nutritional health, big data/cyberpsychology, sustainability, wellbeing). In doing so, we will deviate from classic PBL and integrate elements from project-based, challenge-based and/or community based learning. For instance, in the first two weeks you will work on defining the problem that will guide your team’s activities, together with a stakeholder outside academia. Then, you will analyse the problem, and find relevant and plausible explanations for the problem by consulting applied psychological literature. In the weeks six to nine, your team will develop a process model that can help you develop interventions in weeks ten to thirteen. Biweekly meetings with your mentor as well as midterm and final presentations offer opportunities to gather feedback. In the last two weeks, your team will write a report that will be assessed by your mentor and your external stakeholder.

Individually, you will be challenged to grow a (social) entrepreneurial mindset from week 4 onwards, by imagining how you could put your psychological competences to use creatively for the common good. Here, you will first focus on setting a vision for yourself and your venture and on opportunity identification, looking at the world of work for psychologists in the applied domain that your team is exploring. Next, you will learn to use tools like value proposition maps and business model canvases, to guide the search for information on how to build your social venture. In addition, you will learn to analyse the external environment of your new venture. Finally, you will focus on acquiring resources and on delivering a pitch for your proposal.