Australian Psychology Learning and Teaching

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Third Roundtable for 2024

Third Roundtable for 2024

We shared in three presentations on the theme of “Just-in-Time ‘Big Issue’ Practice-sharing”:

 

John Malouf – Three Assignments Resistant to AI (Big issue is Designing assignments in the era of Generative AI);

 

Esther Chan – Incorporating AI literacy and cultural awareness in research training for educational and developmental psychology students at the Master’s level (Big issue is How to incorporate cultural awareness and AI literacy in research training for psychology students); and

 

Trisha Nowland and Thaatsha Sivananthan – Building reflexivity via reflective writing practice for psychology undergraduates (Big issue is Supporting development of reflexivity skills in psychology undergraduates).

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Second Roundtable for 2024

Second Roundtable for 2024

Title: International Undergraduate Psychology Foundational Competences: Update, Feedback, Relevance?

 

Background/Update: The aims of the International Collaboration on Undergraduate Psychology Outcomes (ICUPO) are to (a) produce an international foundational psychology competence model for the undergraduate level, now called the International Competences for Undergraduate Psychology (ICUP); (b) encourage consideration of the ICUP Model as a reference model in the creation or revision of undergraduate psychology curricula in local, national, and regional contexts, with the model serving as guidance only; and (c) seek support for this role of the ICUP Model from international, regional and national psychology-relevant organisations and leaders. Since October 2022, the ICUPO Committee (17 members with significant educational leadership experience across 14 nations) has met approximately monthly, with an average of 3 working group meetings in between ICUPO meetings. Through an iterative and inclusive process, keeping in mind the varying aims of undergraduate (UG) psychology programs across nations, ICUPO produced the Alpha.R1 Foundational Competence Model for the UG Level. The Model consists of 24 competence statements grouped under 2 core competence categories, Psychological Knowledge and Psychological Research Methods, and 5 Psychology-relevant competence categories: Values & Ethics, Cultural Responsiveness & Diversity, Critical Thinking & Problem-solving, Communication & Interpersonal Skills, and Personal & Professional Development. During August 2023, the International Reference Group on Undergraduate Psychology Outcomes (IRGUPO; over 100 members from 39 nations) provided highly valuable feedback on the Model, which then led to the Beta version. A cyclic process of broad dissemination, stakeholder engagement to elicit feedback, and revision was then initiated, the current version being Beta.R2.

 

Aim of this Roundtable: We briefly discuss the relevance to Australian national accreditation and to local innovation. We welcome your feedback regarding the Beta.R2 version. Within a few hours of this Roundtable, a draft Gamma version will be finalised (with revisions based on your and others’ feedback), and considered within a week by the ICUPO Committee, and then finalised for review prior to, and at the International Congress of Psychology (ICP) in July. It is intended that the ICUP Model is finalised soon after that.

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Comparing ChatGPT with Experts’s Responses

Comparing ChatGPT With Experts’ Responses to Scenarios that Assess Psychological Literacy by M. Anthony Machin , Tanya M. Machin, and Natalie Gasson

We took a deep dive into how ChatGPT compares to experts’ responses to scenarios that assess psychological literacy and this is what we found.

 

Our research reveals ChatGPT’s capacity to demonstrate psychological literacy aligns closely with subject matter experts (SMEs). The study evaluated ChatGPT against SMEs by analyzing responses to 13 psychology research methods scenarios, including the rating of predetermined response options. ChatGPT’s performance was impressive, showcasing a high level of psychological literacy, with Pearson’s correlations between ChatGPT and SME ratings reaching .73 and .80. Further, Spearman’s rhos were .81 and .82, and Kendall’s tau were .67 and .68, indicating a strong concordance. This suggests that generative AI, like ChatGPT, can mirror expert psychological literacy, potentially reshaping learning and application in higher education.

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First Roundtable for 2024

First Roundtable for 2024

Title: Understanding Industry Demand for Australia’s Psychology Graduates

Summary: In this project we wanted to answer the question of where Psychology students can work after graduating, particularly those who exit at the 3-year degree. Together with our ANU collaborators, we analysed more than five million job ads using Machine Learning and Natural Language Processing to identify job roles suitable for psychology graduates. Our analysis shows that graduates of the undergraduate Psychology degree have a wide range of unique skills and knowledge that are explicitly needed and wanted in whole variety of industries, not just the health sector, and allowed us to pinpoint those jobs right down to job titles. Our approach, in which we mapped jobs which asked for the underlying skills of Psychology graduates, identified a wide range of jobs suitable for graduates straight out of the three-year degree, and also those jobs that would be a good fit for Psychology graduates after additional training or experience. Potential job roles spanned nearly every industry, from health to education, business to social professions, science, IT and design, and included jobs where are Psychology graduates are unlikely to be currently sought after as potential employees due to assumptions about what they can do.

These findings can be used to help potential students, current students and graduates to be confident in their decision to pursue a Psychology degree and have a better understanding of how they can apply their skills in the real world once they graduate – we have created specific educational materials for those teaching Psychology degrees to help them use our findings to do this. In addition to clarifying current misconceptions about Psychology courses and related careers among graduates, employers and the general population, we hope the project findings will spearhead a rethink of job search training for Psychology students and graduates, support new internships and work-integrated learning, and help universities build new relationships with potential employers.

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Enhancing Academic Wellbeing

Link to the Second Roundtable on Academic Wellbeing

 

Our second Roundtable for 2023 focused on academic wellbeing.

A recording of the event is available on YouTube.

 

Enhancing wellbeing for academics

Emeritus Professor Tony Machin FAPS, University of Southern Queensland
Published in InPsych 2020, Vol 42, February/March, Issue 1
Click here for the full article.
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New post in 2023

Link to the First Roundtable for 2023

The discussion focused on requirements for group work in the undergraduate program as well as the imapct of technology on academics. For each topic we focused on:

Why is this issue important?

Who does it affect?

What can we do about it?

The recording is now available at First Roundtable 2023