Unit rationale, description and aim
Psychology is a scientific discipline from which stems a profession that is guided by evidence based practice. As a result, training in the skills pertaining to both the critical analysis of research literature, and the conduct of research is at the core of any psychology course. At a 4th year level, students are expected to develop, conduct and report their own research project. This expectation is explicitly stated in the APAC accreditation guidelines for 4th year courses. This unit is the second of two units designed to support students in this process. In particular, this unit provides support for the preparation of a research report of the empirical project that forms part of their research thesis. Although students receive project-specific support from a thesis supervisor, the unit is designed to provide training on generic skills that underpin the successful write up of the report in the form of a research article. In addition to this, the unit is also designed to help students with the preparation of their presentation for the School of Psychology research conference, where all students must present either a short talk or a poster.
Learning outcomes
To successfully complete this unit you will be able to demonstrate you have achieved the learning outcomes (LO) detailed in the below table.
Each outcome is informed by a number of graduate capabilities (GC) to ensure your work in this, and every unit, is part of a larger goal of graduating from ACU with the attributes of insight, empathy, imagination and impact.
Explore the graduate capabilities.
Conduct data collection for a research project, ad...
Learning Outcome 01
Analyse and interpret the data stemming from resea...
Learning Outcome 02
Present research results in the context of a panel...
Learning Outcome 03
Write a research report in the form of a research ...
Learning Outcome 04
Critically analyse research to be able to identify...
Learning Outcome 05
Content
Topics will include:
- Collecting data and analysing data
- Writing an introduction section: the difference between an article introduction and a literature review
- Writing a methods section: emphasis on replicability
- Writing a results section: appropriate structure and use of figures and tables
- Preparing a conference presentation (poster and talk)
- Writing a discussion section: appropriate structure, purpose, integration of findings, and inferences for theory, practice, and future research. Professional pathways after fourth year
Assessment strategy and rationale
There are two main assessments in the unit. The first assessment task is a conference presentation which is designed to assess their ability to communicate their research findings (and their implications) in an oral format. This is a hurdle task and students will present a short talk (approx. 15 min) or a 3 minute blitz poster presentation. The second assessment task is the empirical report of the thesis, which must include all the elements of an empirical report and be written in the format of a journal article. This component of the submission may include an extended methods section (which would correspond to supplementary materials in a journal submission).
Overview of assessments
Conference Presentation Requires students to pres...
Conference Presentation
Requires students to present their research findings in a short talk or blitz poster presentation format.
Hurdle
Empirical report of the thesis (journal article f...
Empirical report of the thesis (journal article format)
100%
Learning and teaching strategy and rationale
The unit involves 12 contact hours distributed across the semester. Students will receive project-specific support from their thesis supervisor, and the unit will focus on the generic skills that underpin the writing of an empirical report in the form of an article. For this purpose, the face-to-face sessions are structured as guided discussions where the lecturer presents some of the most important points to consider in the preparation of each section of an empirical report and students are encouraged to reflect on and discuss how these apply to their own research project. These sessions will include interactive activities where students will complete work in class that can then be reviewed and discussed in small groups to identify strengths and receive constructive feedback on the weaknesses of the work.