The aim of the study was to look at the effectiveness of combining a variety of teaching and learning methods in an attempt to facilitate students' understanding of assessment criteria. Fifty-three psychology students were asked to complete the mismatch exercise (Norton et al., 2002), and a booklet entitled "Your Assignment results and how to…

Background: Recent changes in higher education in the UK have led to much discussion about the performance of men and women students with different methods of assessment. Aim: To see whether or not there were differences between the marks awarded to men and women final-year psychology students as a function of the modes of assessment used. Method:…

In this article, the authors comment on Hugh Foot's article on student research and ethics ["Psychology Teaching Review," 12(1), 82-86 (2006)] The authors agree with Foot that there is no case for accepting less stringent ethical criteria when the researcher is a student. However, they argue that greater attention and more stringent measures…

Peer group supervision has had little attention in the research literature, although it is a common form of supervision utilised by psychologists in practice. The development and implementation of a structured peer supervision group (PSG) with nine trainee psychologists, within the training setting of university-based services, is described in…

A part-time degree programme has been run at the Liverpool John Moores University, formerly Liverpool Polytechnic, for some 20 years without any systematic attempt to evaluate its effects on students. An evaluation was begun by focusing on graduates of the programme who entered between 1992 and 1994 and continued with recent part-time students.…

This paper draws on the psychological theories of self-efficacy and the self-concept to understand students' self-confidence in academic study in higher education as measured by the Academic Behavioural Confidence scale (ABC). In doing this, expectancy-value theory and self-efficacy theory are considered and contrasted with self-concept and…

Psychology undergraduates need to produce good quality essays in order to succeed at university. Students find the transition to university writing difficult. Using a rubric, a profile of student weakness in psychology essay writing was described. The students were generally poor at the structural organisation of their essays. A pilot intervention…

Researchers (Jehng, Johnson & Anderson, 1993; Paulsen & Wells, 1998) have suggested that it is possible to divide disciplines into categories such as "applied" vs "pure". They believe that significant differences exist between the epistemological beliefs of students studying "applied" disciplines to those studying "pure" disciplines. This study…

Multiple choice questions (MCQs) are becoming more common in UK psychology departments and the need to assess their reliability is apparent. Having examined the reliability of MCQs in our department we faced many questions from colleagues about why we were examining reliability, what it was that we were doing, and what should be reported when…

Ethical codes of practice have largely ignored student project work, although there has been some discussion that it ought to be treated as a special case and handled by less stringent ethical review. However, if ethical review is about safeguarding the interests and rights of those who volunteer to participate, then there can be no case for…

Background: Considerable evidence suggests that structured abstracts in scientific journal articles are more informative than traditional ones, but no one (to our knowledge) has written about asking psychology undergraduates to write structured abstracts for their laboratory reports. Aim: Our aim was to assess whether or not the quality of such…

Teaching of History of Psychology is likely to become increasingly important as the British Psychological Society's 2002 guidelines for approved undergraduate courses are implemented. Results of a survey of History of Psychology teaching during the academic year 1999-2000 are summarised and discussed in the light of these new requirements. While…

Introduction: Research has shown that students do not like student presentations, yet a case can be made for them. This study seeks to understand the effects that presentations have on students. Method: Within an action research framework, two repeated-measures studies were completed, one with students undertaking assessed presentations the other…

The research literature documents the different approaches to learning that students in Higher Education (HE) can adopt, e.g. deep, surface and strategic. Stage 1 of a longitudinal study aimed to determine the students' approach to learning, and to assess whether this was related to previous learning experiences, initial expectations of HE and…

"Peer tutoring" refers to a variety of ways in which learning takes place through interaction with peers. This paper describes the development of a module (called Peer Assisted Learning and the Study of Psychology) through which third-year psychology undergraduates participate as peer tutors in a foundation-level module on study skills for…