Last changed
13 Sept 2012 ............... Length about 3,000 words (24,000 bytes).
This is a WWW document maintained by
Steve Draper, installed at http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/~steve/resources/foreign.html.
Web site logical path:
[www.psy.gla.ac.uk]
[~steve]
[resources]
[this page]
[email
aliases]
Related pages for maintainence:
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The visiting student liaison for the
Psychology department/school
is Lorna Morrow.
(This page is maintained on her behalf
by Steve Draper.)
(A single combined page for convenient printing is here.)
To find out the room a lecture course is to be held in, my advice is:
Consult, on the day before the first lecture, the
online timetables
(or
my hand-made alternative entry to them).
Lorna Morrow is
the organiser / liaison faculty member of the School of Psychology
for students who are visiting from abroad: that is, JYA/exchange students
and others who are visiting Glasgow University while mainly registered at a
university in some other country. This now includes
Erasmus/SOCRATES students visiting from the EU (who may also wish to look at
this page and the
University notes on Erasmus);
and home students (i.e. already studying psychology at Glasgow university) who
want a year abroad away from here (e.g. in USA or Germany).
This page collects some links and tips about this part of my job i.e. about my
understanding of what is involved for foreign students visiting this
university and doing some psychology.
This page may change as I improve my grasp of the issues.
The main difficulty you are likely to face in understanding what psychology
courses to take is that our teaching is fundamentally not designed as a set of
standalone courses of a single standard size on the North American model. For
instance, the most important practical and course-work is not part of the
individual modules, but done (by home students) separately. The modules
themselves thus mostly have no coursework or practical work as part of them.
Another of the consequences is that getting registered for the courses you take
here is likely to be more of a nuisance for you than the registration
processes organised in many US universities. That is not only because we may
be less computerised than your home institution, but because you
are selecting courses of a quite different kind, in quite different
combinations, to the home students, for whom the process is different.
Here's a few notes on the terminology (actually, vile jargon) used here.
The problem is that you may not be familiar with the way we use words like
"course" or "level" or "professor" here; that it is probably often a silly
way, though terms elsewhere are no more rational, just different;
but you have to understand them or you can't understand the information we do
actually provide.
Our local or home students do 4 year degrees, and we refer to these as level
1, level 2, level 3, and level 4. Levels 3 and 4 and also referred to as
"Honours classes", as opposed to "Ordinary classes" (levels 1 and 2).
HOWEVER the university catalogue now uses "level" to mean something
different e.g. "Level 3 (SCQF level 9)".
If you have done a good Introductory Psychology course before coming here, we
expect you to do our Level (year) 3 and 4 courses, all of which are listed in
the catalogue as "Level 4 (SCQF level 10)" courses; and NOT the ones listed
in the catalogue as level 3, which are less demanding and which are not used
by our home students who want a qualification recognised by professional
bodies.
The University recently reorganised, abolishing departments, and in many
cases renaming them "schools" or else merging them into schools. If you see or
hear someone say "department" then first assume they mean the school of the
same name, then assume they refer to a subject group embedded within some
larger school. I haven't found a convenient web representation of this, but if
puzzled you could look at my
rough notes on this.
There is no agreed use of the word "course" at this university. You are
likely to find many people who say there is, but in fact they don't agree with
each other. You may find it used for everything from a whole degree programme
down to a tiny element worth a few credits or less. The same may apply to
"module", "option", etc.
The word "paper" here not only may, but is more likely to, refer to an exam
rather than to writing a long essay as coursework. Thus here people may talk
of a student taking 5 papers for their finals (meaning 5 separate exams).
In North America, the three main grades of university teacher are Assistant,
Associate, and full Professor. Here, they are generally called Lecturer,
Senior Lecturer, and Professor.
This university has gone over from terms to semesters. If you
hear someone say "term" they now probably mean "semester". Semester 1: from
late September until Christmas. Semester 2: from January onwards.
Our local or home students do 4 year degrees, and we refer to these as level
1, level 2, level 3, and level 4. Levels 3 and 4 and also referred to as
"Honours classes" (cf. "upper division"), as opposed to "Ordinary classes".
Roughly speaking, you may take the whole of our level 1, level 2, or level 3
courses; or you may take any mixture selected from most of our level 3 and
level 4 elements.
Note that the what the catalogue calls
"Level 3 (SCQF level 9)" courses, which have course codes in the 3,000 range,
are not intended nor normally suitable for visiting students.
By far the most detailed information is in the school/department's course
handbooks ("course information documentation"), which gives almost lecture by
lecture specifications of the course contents, and which are available on the
web (see below).
I maintain a listing of psychology
courses for visiting students. This attempts to be an up to date version
of what is in the catalogue, shows which are available to visiting students,
and may have better information on which courses are not running this session.
The University catalogue of officially approved
courses.
I also have, and try to maintain with up to date accurate information, a
listing of the course codes for psychology courses
that we offer to study-abroad students. This is mainly important for
administration.
A note on assessment policy is available.
Basically, students here in semester 2 will mostly do the same assessment as
home students (usually exams in May), while students leaving earlier are most
often assessed by extra term papers.
Finding us:
Lorna Morrow
How to
find Lorna and the dept./school
the main psychology dept./school website
How to find the course administrators / secretaries: just find the dept./school:
then the first offices inside the main door.
School's page about Erasmus and the
University page about Erasmus
The university office for year abroad students:
general web page,
and the key person
Colette McGowan
(also here,
or if necessary
here).
My attempt at an up to date catalogue-like
listing of the courses Psychology offers.
University catalogue:
course list with summary descriptions. It may list some courses that are
approved but not running this year.
List of the course codes for psychology courses.
Assessment policy
The department/school handbooks:
The handbooks are most valuable for giving detailed course contents (almost
lecture by lecture). They also give the days, times, and places of
classes. They do not give course codes, credits, and the assessment details
in them apply only to local students, and not to year abroad students.
They are normally available from the department/school office ready-printed; but are
also available on the web as fairly large (0.5Mbyte) PDF files, which can
be printed out 2 document pages per side of printer-paper, and double-sided.
Print off a blank timetable
to use in figuring out how to fit your classes together.
See here.
- All courses in level 3 and level 4 (except for critical reviews) are now 10
credits each. Level 3 courses generally run for one semester; but level 4
courses run for half a semester only. Bear that in mind when looking at the
times/days they run.
- Course descriptions/catalogue
The catalogues give only very brief descriptions of courses. Full
details, with aims and objectives for each lecture, are in the course
handbooks. These are also available as PDF files on the web (see the web
address above).
- Room/time changes
It is best to check the times and especially the places (rooms) of lectures
online just before the first lecture of the course:
http://www.psy.gla.ac.uk/students/index.php.
The handbook goes to press before courses start, and room changes do
sometimes occur.
- Two warnings about our course timetables.
- Level 3 timetable: may be hard for you to understand: lectures
do not follow a regular weekly pattern,
unlike other courses. The printed timetable shows calendar weeks vs. day/time
slots: and to follow a course, you need to scan to find all 13 slots (e.g.
"COG1 .. COG13") for a course, spread across 11 weeks or so.
However the online timetable has a
format available
that can show you how the lectures for a given module fall in terms of the
normal pattern of weekdays
vs. time of day.
- Level 4 timetable: our level 4 courses run for only half a semester each
(5 weeks of 2 hour sessions); so that each course runs either in the first or
second half of the semester.
- Psychology portal (VLE)
You are likely to find useful downloads such as slides from lectures, and
other material, on the department/school "portal" (effectively, a Virtual Learning
Environment). This is at:
portal.psy.gla.ac.uk.
You will need a password that works on it, and this will be emailed to you.
(Your login name on the portal is your student ID number with an appended
letter from your name?) I hope this will be arranged
automatically for you, but if not don't hesitate to follow the instructions
on its home page to send an email to get someone to fix it for you.
- Emails and other announcements to the class
e.g. about the reading party, registration classes, etc., frequently do not
apply to visiting students, only to those majoring exclusively in psychology.
Staff making such announcements do not remember that there are a few other
students to consider.
- Email list for visiting students
You should be entered (automatically, perhaps after a delay) on an email
list for visiting students doing one or more courses in psychology.
If you want to contact other students like this you could email directly to
these lists:
"foreignL3 AT psy.gla.ac.uk" for those doing at least one level 3 course.
"foreignL4 AT psy.gla.ac.uk" for those doing at least one level 4 course.
More information on these lists
Information about exams and term papers is dealt with
on my assessment page.
Lorna Morrow is also available for you to consult about all written work for
the department (including essays, lab reports, etc.), at all levels.
Don't I have to do lab work?
Practical work for our home students is done in separate projects, not
associated with modules.
Shouldn't I have assignments to hand in?
No, except for the minority of level 4 option courses that have coursework as
well as an exam.
Won't I get any practice or feedback at exams?
Not unless you organise it yourself. Past exam papers are available in the
library. Home students will have had practice, and will be taking many exams
all in the same format in this department/school.
I'd like to do a psycholinguistics course.
Psycholinguistics material is scattered as elements in:
(level 3) Cognitive psychology
(level 4) Interaction and communication
(level 4) Psychology of reading and understanding
The MyCampus query that gets all data on visiting students (brilliant) is
here. Fill in the term (e.g. "2012") and click "View
results"; then download a CSV version if you like.
Web site logical path:
[www.psy.gla.ac.uk]
[~steve]
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