BSc Psychology at King's – Welcome to our new students for 2023

Congratulations – you’re in! We hope you are looking forward to starting with us at King’s. This webpage includes information, guidance and advice to help you prepare for, and get started on, your BSc Psychology degree. The information below focuses on what you need to know before you arrive, and on what you will do in the first few days and weeks of your degree.

The first on-campus session of the BSc Psychology degree will be an afternoon of induction sessions on Guy’s Campus on Monday 18 September 2023. There will be a second day of induction activities, also at Guy’s Campus, on Tuesday 19 September. However, there are several things that you should do before then, as well as other activities that you can opt into.

Download the Welcome to King's App

The Welcome to King’s App includes the Welcome Calendar for new students at King’s. This will show you what’s happening for the whole period of Welcome to King’s and allow you to book into events – both during the online week (11-15 September) and the on-campus week (18-22 September). You can download the Welcome to King’s App for free from an Appstore (e.g., Google or Apple) – though please check carefully when doing so because there are other Apps available with very similar names!

Introductory work for the Term 1 psychology modules

Start preparing for your degree right away! We have identified some reading and other activities which will introduce some of your Term 1 modules. There are details of this material below. This will take less than a day (e.g., they could be done over few evenings); please complete this work by Friday 22 September.

Check your King's email account regularly

Email is one of the main ways that we will contact you with important information about your studies. Once you are a member of King’s College London, the University will no longer use the email account that you used in your communication with King’s during the application and pre-admission process. Therefore, it is very important that you get into a regular habit of checking your King's email account – ideally, every working day – because otherwise you may miss out on important information. There may only be a few emails in the weeks leading up to the start of term, but once term has started, there will be a great deal of information coming to you via your King's email account.

Improve your Digital Skills

As part of being a student at King’s, you will have access to an enormous range of online resources that will open up many opportunities for learning. To help you make the most of these resources and opportunities, King’s have designed a Key Digital Skills programme. You can self-register for this online course as soon as you have the K-number and password for your King's IT Account. Therefore, we recommend that you make a start on this course as soon as you can.

Here is an outline of what happens each day.

Day 1 of Induction: Monday 18 September

Come to the Harris Lecture Theatre (Hodgkin Building) on the Guy’s Campus. We will begin our first session at 12.30 but please feel free to arrive any time from 12.15 onwards to ensure that you are there in good time. This first day will include activities in the BSc Psychology Teaching Rooms (Addison House), the Student Computing Rooms, and a campus tour. You will get to know your fellow BSc Psychology students, meet your lecturers, be introduced to some of the online learning resources for your studies (e.g., order the e-codes for your Term 1 textbooks). Please make sure that you have had something to eat before 12.30 when we start the afternoon’s activities: we will provide some snacks and something to drink in the middle of the afternoon, but we will not be providing lunch on Day 1 of Induction. The day’s activities will finish by 17.30.

Day 2 of Induction: Tuesday 19 September

Please arrive at Guy’s Campus in time for a 10.00 start (you will find out on Day 1 of Induction which room to come to when you arrive on Day 2). You will learn more about your course and what your first year of study will involve, and will find out about KEATS (the online platform that provides you with resources and activities to support your studies). You will get to meet your Personal Tutor and meet with other students in your Personal Tutor Group. We will provide lunch, which will be one of several opportunities to get to know your lecturers, tutors and fellow students. Day 2 of Induction will finish by 17.30.

Please sign up for both days of Induction activities via the Welcome to King’s App. If you are unable to attend some or all of the two Induction Days, please email Ginny Sanders (Programme Officer for Year 1 BSc Psychology students).

For the remainder of the on-campus week of Welcome to King’s, there are no compulsory induction events for the BSc Psychology course. However, there will be many events at King’s that you can get involved in – and we recommend that you choose some of these events to join in with (whatever interests you!). For example, the KCLSU Welcome Fair on Thursday 21 and Friday 22 September at Old Billingsgate will introduce you to all the clubs, societies and activities that you can get involved with at King’s. There will also be events online and at the Denmark Hill Campus for new students in the Institute of Psychiatry, Psychology and Neuroscience (the part of King’s that you are now a member of). So do keep an eye out for anything that interests you.

Don’t forget to complete the introductory work for the Term 1 psychology modules by the end of the on-campus week of Welcome to King’s – see details below.

The “regular” timetable for the term begins on Monday 25 September.

Compulsory BSc Psychology Term 1 Modules:

• Psychology and the Brain
• Psychology and Society
• Research Methods 1
• Inspirational Research (continues in Term 2)
• Addressing Real-World Problems (continues in Term 2)

Additionally, Foundation Graduate Attributes runs across both terms. This optional module has a programme of activities that is designed to complement the core modules, helping you develop the skills necessary for your university studies. There are also opportunities within this module to prepare yourself for extracurricular activities (e.g. placements or summer work).

The teaching timetable for Term 1 begins on Monday 25 September. The final day of term is Friday 15 December and your final timetabled activity for Term 1 takes place on Thursday 14 December 2023.

Three of your Term 1 modules have examinations in January, within the period Friday 5 January to Thursday 11 January 2024. These will be online examinations for which you will not need to be on campus. Therefore, you will not have to be in London to take these exams (though be aware that exams have a fixed start time and end time and take place within the working day according to London time). Term 2 begins on Friday 12 January 2024 but, according to the current timetable plans, the first day of teaching for Year 1 BSc Psychology students will be Monday 15 January 2024.

We also recommend that you take a look at this guide that has been put together for students who are about to start university. It is called Know Before You Go and will help prepare you for many of the practical and personal challenges associated with entering higher education.

Here are the details of the main module textbooks for your core modules:

• Schacter, D., Gilbert, D., & Wegner, D. with Hood, B. M. Psychology (European Edition). Published by Worth Publishers / Palgrave.
• Carlson, N. R., & Birkett, M. Foundations of Behavioral Neuroscience. Published by Pearson.
• Reisberg, D. Cognition: Exploring the science of the mind. Published by W. W. Norton & Co.
• Sutton, R., & Douglas, K. Social psychology. Published by Palgrave Macmillan.
• Leman, P., Bremner, A., Parke, R. D., & Gauvin, M. Developmental psychology. Published by McGraw-Hill.
• Maltby, J. Day, L. & Macaskill, A. Personality, individual differences and intelligence. Published by Pearson.
• Haselgrove, M. Learning: A very short introduction. Published by Oxford University Press.
• Stanovich, K. E. How to think straight about psychology. Published by Pearson.
• Howell, D. C. Fundamental statistics for the behavioral sciences. Published by Cengage Learning.
• Gravetter, F. J., Forzano, L. B. & Rakow, T. Research methods for the behavioural sciences. Published by Cengage Learning.

Where relevant, we will explain how you access your copies individual of these textbooks in the Induction sessions on 18-19 September.

Meet some of the team

Ginny Sanders

BSc Psychology Programme Officer for Year 1 BSc Psychology students

Dr Julia Ouzia

Inclusive Education Liaison; Module Lecturer for Psychology and the Brain

Professor Michael Aitken

Director BSc Psychology

Dr Ellie Dommett

Deputy Director BSc Psychology; Module Co-Lead for Psychology and the Brain.

Dr Tim Rakow

Deputy Director BSc Psychology; Module Co-Lead for Research Methods 1 and Addressing Problems

Dr Charlotte Russell

BSc Psychology Admissions Tutor

Dr Maria Livanou

Module Co-Lead for Psychology and Society

Dr Stacey Bedwell

Module Co-Lead for Inspirational Research and Psychology and the Brain

Dr Salim Hashmi

Module Co-Lead for Psychology and Development

Dr Alan Meehan

Module Co-Lead for Inspirational Research and Psychology and Development

Emmanouela Konstantara

Module Co-Lead for Addressing Real-World Problems

Dr James Findon

Module Co-Lead for Addressing Real-World Problems

Dr Dan Kennedy-Higgins

Module Co-Lead for Research Methods 1 and Research Methods 2

Dr Helena Zavos

Senior Tutor

Dr Apurv Chauhan

Module Co-Lead for Psychology and Society

Dr Rebecca Upsher

Module Co-Lead for Psychology and the Individual and Graduate Attributes; Deputy Senior Tutor

Dr Ken Widanaralalage

Module Co-Lead for Psychology and Society

Dr Sam Westwood

Module Co-Lead for Research Methods 2

Dr Fiona Essig

Module Co-Lead for Foundation Graduate Attributes

Dr Devin Terhune

Deputy Senior Tutor for Year 1 students

1. The IoPPN is passionate about psychological research, and this is reflected in your BSc degree programme. In the Inspirational Research module you will have the opportunity to meet with some of King’s notable researchers, and to ask questions of them about their research. For this module, it will be valuable to keep up to date with current research so that you can engage fully with these sessions. A good way to keep up to date with research is to read the British Psychological Society (BPS) Research Digest, which appears on the BPS website. For your introductory activity for this module, take an hour or so to read through some of the recently posted articles.

2. In your degree, we will train you to understand psychological research and to be able to conduct research for yourself. This will begin with the Research Methods 1 module. Learning skills in data analysis will be an important part of this training, and we have prepared an online lecture to introduce you to this statistical component of this module.

Your activity for this module is to participate in this online lecture:

You will first need to download  this lecture handout.

It will take you a couple of hours to follow the lecture and to do the tasks associated with it. The handout also has details of some questions you should answer (which you can do before arriving on campus) and your initial reading for this module (to be done once we have given you your textbook).

3. Before you arrive at King’s College London to study on the BSc Psychology degree, you will find it beneficial to familiarise yourself with some material on biological psychology which will relate to your Psychology and the Brain module. To do this we encourage you to access a new free online textbook 'Introduction to Biological Psychology' and read Chapter 1. If you have more time, reading any of chapters 2-5 will be helpful to you later on. If you cannot access this book or prefer to read something briefer, you can start with a resource from the British Neuroscience Association (BNA), which is free to download from the BNA. The sections most relevant to your study in the first few weeks are those at the beginning of the publication. Therefore, you should read through Sections 1-3, but you may also want to look over the material on the developing nervous system and brain imaging. You could also look at this neuroscience and psychology blog which links to some interesting articles.

Each module requires 150 hours of work – making a total of 1200 hours across the year for the eight modules. That’s a lot of work to fit into 36 weeks (28 weeks of term time plus two 4-week periods between the University terms) – but the effort is well worth it! Most of this time will be spent in some form of independent study; therefore, for much of the year it will be up to you to organise your time in the way that helps you to get the most from the course. To give you an idea of what this means, you might choose to work 40 hours per week every week during term and do the same for two of the eight weeks that fall outside of term time. Alternatively, it might suit you better to do 35 hours every week during term and outside of term time, taking a week off at Christmas / New Year and half a week off in the period between Terms 2 and 3.