Psychology MA/MSc (Online)

Megan Thompson 
Hi, welcome everyone to today’s session, Understanding Human Behaviour, which is going to be exploring our online psychology programme at Goldsmiths.  

So I’m Megan. I work in our marketing team, looking after our online programmes. And I’m joined today with Dr. Bence Palfi, who’s the programme convenor for the Psychology Online MA/MSc here at Goldsmiths. 
 

So I think just going on to some quick housekeeping, if you do have any questions, please type them into the Q&A, which is just at the top of your screen. And if you see any questions that you want the answer to, if you can just press the up arrow, that will help us be able to see it, sort of pop up the screen. 
 

And yeah, like I said, we’ll try and answer all of your questions during the session. My colleague is off screen and will be messaging back with any responses that you have specifically around the application itself.  

And any questions that we have for Bence we’ll save up towards the end of the session and we’ll answer during our Q&A portion. And if we don’t have a chance to get back to you, we will follow up with you after the session. 
 

So on the agenda today, we’re going to run through some quick introductions and discuss why Goldsmiths might be the right choice for you for your online study. We’ll take a look at an overview of our programme and you know, what makes it unique. Take a look through the career opportunities and the pathways that our graduates will be qualified for. And think about what online study is really like and the learning environment that you’ll be using if you join us. And we’ll also go through the admissions process and any entry criteria. So that’s looking at both our English language criteria and the grades that you’ll need to join us. And then we’ll finish that off with some questions. 
 

So, Bence, over to you for introductions, please. 

 
Bence Palfi  
Thank you, Megan. Hi everyone. So I’m Bence Palfi and I’m going to be the programme convenor for the psychology programme. And apart from being a programme convenor, I will be leading some of the core modules you will be learning, especially in phase one.  

So in the beginning, modules called Mind, Brain and Society and Biology and Development of the Mind. These are introductions to psychology for specifically designed for those who have also no background in psychology. And later on, I will be also leading a communicating psychological research that is more or less like a science communication module. And likely I will also be leading a fourth module with a strong focus on applications, which I will talk about later.  

My research background is mostly in decision making research. Currently, I’m more interested in human-AI interactions, how people or how the interaction between people and any sorts of like algorithm or AI interface can be improved to improve human decisions, meta science as well, that is about research, about how people do research essentially, and how we can improve the scientific process.  

And currently I’m working on a large language model-based tool to support rigorous pre-registration and research practices. So this essentially you can see how I’m blending meta science with my other expertise in human interaction and decision making. 
 

Let me also introduce other members of staff. Professor Yan de Fokert will be supporting me in leading the programme. And Karina Linel and Randy Cooper, they are going to lead the research method and statistics modules, which also play a very crucial part of any sort of psychology programme and education. 

As you will see, psychology is very strongly evidence and science based. So these are important parts of your training. And Professor Agnieszka Golez-Desvala and Professor Alice Jones, they will be leading to specialised more applied 
modules. Alice is leading an education psychology and education module. She has a very strong background, both academic and non-academic background in the application of psychology in educational practise and context. And I guess she has a very strong background in social psychology and especially in group conflicts or understanding group conflicts and resolving group conflicts with her through psychological solutions. So her applied module is focusing on that. 
 

Let’s move on to, yeah, thank you. So just a few words on why we believe it’s great to study at Goldsmiths online. So studying online with Goldsmiths mean joining a vibrant and boundary pushing community without pressing pause on your life.  

So essentially, with the part-time solution and online solution, we provide lots of flexibility for you. We provide a platform for self-discovery and social change as well that’s accessible and flexible to fit into your busy schedules. So our courses blend academic rigour with the freedom to think differently, equipping you with critical skills to solve real-world challenges. I will elaborate on these in the later slides. 
 

And some facts about Goldsmith and specifically the psychology subject of psychology at Goldsmith. So 2 core values of whole of Goldsmith is radical creativity and academic rigour. You will see both of these manifesting in our psychology programme. 
 

And our programmes and specifically the modules of this programme, they blend word class teaching with the freedom to think differently, equipping you with critical skills, creative thinking to solve real world challenges. So you will see that these are our core skills that manifest across all of our modules. 
 

Goldsmith is part of the, yeah, sorry, just a few facts, a few more facts as well to promote Goldsmiths being top tech university in London and specifically psychology is being the 18th in the UK was in 2025. 
 

And then let me tell you a few core ideas or important things about studying psychology specifically at Goldsmiths and specifically this online MSC. It focuses on solving real-world problems by using psychology thoughtfully, critically, and creatively. So again, this is a very core part of our programme.  

So it doesn’t only mean that we will have like 1 module called Applied Psychology, but this is something that you will see it’s applied throughout all our modules. So we will prepare you from the beginning. What you see the example on the right side, this is from one of the introduction modules from a section called Cognition and Culture.  

Then we very blend cultural topics of culture as well as topics of the mind of cognition. But essentially what I just wanted to deliver is these core ideas are applied immediately from the introduction module.  

We will be immediately seeing some examples of how real world problems can be applied with psychological solutions. 
 

You are exposed to innovative ideas. Sorry, just a few more words about the other things. You are exposed to innovative ideas and approaches that broaden your thinking and inspire creative problem solving. And you also shape decisions, influence policy, improve wellbeing or support positive change.  

These are partly, again, values of Goldsmiths and psychology department or subject as a whole. But also, you can see how they manifest throughout this programme specifically. 
 

Okay. So our online programme is designed for graduates from any discipline to deepen your understanding of human behaviour and gain career enhancing skills.  

This means that you will likely find our programme exciting even if you have some sort of background in psychology because we have a special focus on 
how to apply in a creative and an ethical manner, psychological knowledge.  

And also, we are also focusing on empowering you as a student to find ways in which you can use psychology to enhance your career or find a pathway in which you can use psychology. 
 

And of course, the programme is perfectly ideal for those as well who have no background in psychology at all. So you will experience, again, these are our main core values, translational and applied focus throughout all the modules, collaboration at the core, meaning that many of your courseworks, some of the marked summative works are also expected to be prepared as part of a collaboration and flexible study pathways, which work especially well for part-time students. But this also means that we will let you explore what you kind of like 
within psychology and then choose even, for instance, between an MSc and an MA pathway.  

For instance, if you prefer more research, then you can go through the MSc pathway. If you prefer policy analysis, you can go through the MA pathway. But it also means that there are other exit degrees, which I can talk about maybe in the next slide more with the examples. 
 

Sorry, then a slightly later, but essentially we also provide exit degrees before MA/MSc, essentially just providing you even more flexibility if you don’t want to go through the whole programme. The full programs, so now the MA/MSc, these are the full programmes.  

These take two years, part-time, 180 total credits, 8 modules in total, and the dissertation on top of that. You can pay by module, which you can see the cost for modules or the dissertation modules, and you can also see the overall cost. 
 

However, there is a summer scholarship, which I wanted to highlight, meaning that you will get an £5,000 tuition fee waiver if you apply for the upcoming intake, which is starting at the end of August, application deadline, which I will highlight later again or Megan, we’ll talk about the application process later. It’s on the 14th of August.  

So essentially, you can imagine that this £5000 waiver applies to the £16,000 total tuition fee, so minus £16,000 pounds, of course.  

Importantly, we have also submitted a BPS accreditation for the MSc pathway. So this will only apply what I’m talking about in terms of the BPS only applies to the MSC pathway, which will, if it is, once it’s accepted, it will act as a conversion programme as well, meaning that this will provide a gateway to training in postgraduate psychology programmes, if you want to transition, for instance, into a professional psychology career, you will need to have a BPS accredited psychology programme.  

And this also means that those of you who don’t have any psychology background, once you finish a programme that was BPS accredited, that’s more than enough to transition into postgraduate psychology training. And this is of course, again, a marker of quality as well, a BPS accredited programme, which has some strong requirements on certain topics and methodology we need to cover, as well as staff student ratio, ensuring that you will have an engaging and high-quality education. 
 

And let me talk a little bit about the specific modules and these phases. 
So just a few words again about the programme. The MSc is designed to turn psychological theory into practical action, as I mentioned previously. And you don’t just study concepts, you will learn how to apply them to real world challenges using evidence-based methods to solve problems in everyday life or also in organisation or even in larger communities. 
 

These modules, unless we indicate otherwise, these will be the modules you will do if you start in the next, at the next starting point at the end of August. The programme is broken down to three phases.  

You can also imagine these as with the exit of awards phase one, if you complete phase one, you can get a certain exit award if you want to finish your training there. And if you complete all phases, then you can either get the MA/MSc, depending on the type of dissertation you choose at the end.  

Phase one, mostly focusing on introduction into the content of psychology or domains or subject of psychology. 
 

There are five big subjects in psychology, the individual differences, cognitive psychology, biological psychology, developmental psychology and social psychology. We will cover these in the first two modules.  

And then there is an introduction into research design and statistics, which is followed up later in phase two. But then immediately in phase one, we will have a module specifically focused on psychology for real world impact, that is translation of psychological theory into practical solutions, where we will provide you with case studies from real world experts who have psychological background, but rather than working at universities, they have their careers outside of academia and they will bring some case studies from their careers, from very different careers, from clinical psychology to forensic psychology and to, for instance, how to create behavioural insights from data, how to support communities and so on. 
 

And then in phase two, we will just continue building on knowledge from phase one, extend methodological knowledge, science communication, which is again an important part of critical thinking and to translating psychological theory into real life applications, and two other very applied focused modules, which I mentioned 
psychology and education and social psychology of social problems.  

And then you will be able to choose between the MA or MSc pathway, depending on your interest, if you are more interested in policy applications or more interested in a research-based, empirical research-based dissertation. 
 

Just a few words about networking opportunities throughout your programme. We will be designing journal clubs, which are designed for online learners to help you strengthen critical thinking skills and stay up to date with cutting edge psychology.  

We understand that reading. I mean, the whole online learning experience can be sometimes isolating, especially reading. But journal clubs are excellent tools to make these as well, collaborative, to understand these very abstract ideas and critical think about evidence.  

It’s always better to have a forum where you can discuss this thing with your peers. 
 

There will be regular research seminars, which will be accessible online. These will expose you to research styles and career paths and showcasing the latest work in the department. 
 

And also one of our modules specifically focuses on, which I mentioned previously, the science communication is specifically focusing on research happening at a time in the psychological or the psychological department. And these will be delivered by members of staff where ideally, if you like one of those topics, maybe you can also connect with members of staff if there is any opportunity for joining some sort of research.  

And finally, professional engagement directly integrated into the curriculum. Students regularly interact with academics, practitioners, policymakers and industry specialists to actively shape the fields they work in.  

This again, something I’ve already mentioned, parts of these are planned as parts of some of our more applied or specifically applied modules like the module, for instance, in the phase one, which is specifically about real world case studies from. 
either policy makers or industry specialists. And then there is the science communication module, where you can meet 10 academics from the department. 
 

And a few words about potential career opportunities. There is always the opportunity to just continue postgraduate study, as in like PhD, if you are interested in research, but we want to empower you to find other routes as well or pathways outside of the traditional academic pathway, because we understand most of the people. 
 

Most of the people are not interested following up a specific very academic style research pathway. And research can be also used outside of academia as well. Of course, these are just some potential career options you can follow up easily. 
with a strong psychology training. For instance, in education and child development, we will, as you have seen, we will have specifically a module about this. There is also health, mental health and social care.  

Many of our modules focuses specifically on mental health. Consulting and behavioural science or user experience. We will have the practical module, one of the case studies in the practical module, focusing on this topic as well. 
 

And if you are also interested in more, you can do, you can follow up that link as well to see what are the sorts of career options or specific jobs advertised for people with psychological MSc. 
So again, these are some of our core skills and slightly values, but more like skills, practical skills as well that you will acquire throughout the study or by the end of the programme that you can translate directly into industry jobs where it is highly needed.  

For instance, ethical and professional data skills are especially needed now with the appearance of big data and also large language models being used for data analysis, understanding privacy, and other very important issues with data handling is important in any of these data related jobs.  

Strong collaborative working is required in almost any industry, of course, as well as a clear communication of complex ideas. 
 

And then there is the very highly specific skill of practical coding skills, which nowadays are expected also within psychology to be able to complete comprehensive analysis of your data. You will need to acquire some sort of data analysis skills and we will support you to do this with coding rather than just in a simple clicking basis like it used to be in the old days of psychology education.  

Here are some potential companies that are looking for people with psychology background. 
 

But it’s not just, I mean, some of them are also not-for-profit, like NHS, for instance. And there are lots of options in the public sector, but there are also a lot of smaller companies. And for the practical module, I’ve also tried to bring in case studies and experts who are from, for instance, who have their own companies. 
 

They have psychology background, for instance, but they managed to create their own companies, funded their own companies where they use psychological insight for specific fields of psychology to resolve real world problems like in music, aesthetic psychology, or behavioural consultancy and so on. 

 
Megan Thompson 
Great, thank you, Bence. So I’m just going to cover some more about online learning here at Goldsmiths. So at Goldsmiths, it’s really important for us that you’re developing the skills that will help you really advance your personal and professional development through online learning, which Bence has covered quite a lot of already. 
 

But our psychology programme is really designed with a real focus on ensuring that you’re gaining analytical skills and the resilience, flexibility and agility, you know, those really valuable competencies to advance in your career. And we believe that online learning is a really good way to help cultivate digitally fluent leaders who can motivate, collaborate and communicate effectively across boundaries, really.  

And then of course, creative thinking is another important value and skill for our students. So not just preparing students to respond to change, but also sort of helping them learn how to shape it as well. And at Goldsmiths, our graduates emerge not just as problem solvers, but also as really socially intelligent leaders with a strong grounding and human understanding.  

And that human centred digital approach to teaching is what’s really important to us and meeting those strong values of care, creativity and connexion that really forms the backbone of Goldsmith’s sort of ethos in teaching.  

And so the online classroom, all of this really feeds into our classroom where you develop those skills. So our learning environment has been built by our goal team to ensure that you can study while maintaining, you know, a strong balance and commitments in your personal life. 
 

And this programme’s delivered across this platform that we have and it will be where all of your interactive learning and assessments and feedback takes place. So everything is all in one place and it’s really very easy and straightforward to use. And there are a lot of benefits to learning online.  

So choosing to do a part-time programme online with Goldsmiths means that you get so much more flexibility, both in terms of where and when you pick up your learning and assessment on a week to week basis.  

And also just with easy access through any browser or any device. And all of these programmes that we have are designed to be sort of accessible throughout. 
 

And so to ensure that you’re really getting the most out of it, we would generally say a commitment of 15 to 20 hours per week is suitable. Is there anything you wanted to add then, say, about online learning and the environment that the psychology programme is hosted on? 

 
Bence Palfi  
Yes, and partly also trying to answer one of the questions there, which you have partly answered with the roughly 15 hours per week, is that there will be only two live events per module, and these will be Q&A sessions like this session right now, which will be recorded. 
 

And those will be mostly focusing on, the first one will be focusing on introducing the module specifically and the module lead. And the second one will be focusing on introducing the summative coursework or exam or whatever you will need to do, which will be marked. So these sessions will give you an option to like ask your questions. 

But if you cannot join, then you can just watch the recording. Other than that, everything else will be asynchronous, so you will not have to join at a specific time. 

 
Megan Thompson 
Brilliant, thank you. 
 

Yeah, and then just sort of following on from that as well, I think there’s lots of opportunities to connect with your faculty and your peers through online learning as well.  

So we’ve got these discussion forums and going through that sort of eight-week module structure really gives you the opportunity to work at that suitable part-time pace, as Bence was just saying. 
 

And we have some great student support services in place as well to ensure that, you know, you’re not feeling like you’re going through it alone.  

And so we’ve got, of course, that online library where there’s loads of extra resources for you as well that you’ll be able to access as a Goldsmith student.  

And we have our module leaders who will be there to help with any questions or give you feedback who you can check in with.  

And then we also have our disability and wellbeing support where we can really help you with, you know, managing things like your mental health or any additional needs that you might have around studying.  

Did you want to add anything in there, Bence, say maybe about speaking with module leaders or anything else on the student support side? 

 
Bence Palfi  
Not on that specifically, but maybe also about how I mentioned that collaboration plays a key role in the programme. And we will support this partly with these discussion forums, which we created on the online platform.  

And then you will have either the option to be just randomly assigned to groups in case when there is a group assessment or a group task, or you will, I think in some cases, you will also be allowed to choose group members or even opt out if you think that you don’t have the capacity for a specific task to work with others. So we will always give you the flexibility to just submit alone if you feel you will not have the time, for instance, to coordinate with others for that specific task. 
 

But we just encourage you to see this as a learning opportunity, because this is a very important skill, which we’ve heard from industry partners that they require. And we just want to essentially provide you a safe space where you can practise collaborating with your peers and creating something together. 

 
Megan Thompson 
Great, thank you. 
And so just looking at entry requirements for joining the programme and our admissions process. So the standard entry route to join the programme is to have a bachelor’s degree with a 2.1 or an equivalent in any subject.  

Or we will accept people with a 2.2 bachelor’s degree with two years worth of relevant work experience. However, I think it’s quite important to note here as well that if you don’t meet the entry criteria, it’s always worth getting in touch with us to see if there’s anything, you know, that we can do or if there’s a suitable fit just based on your individual circumstances.  

So Bence will review applications and you’ll be able to speak with someone in the admissions team who’ll be really helpful for and helping you decide, you know, if this is a good fit for you based on your previous experience or qualifications. So make sure you do get in touch in the first instance when it comes to the entry criteria.  

And similarly, as the programme is taught in English, if English isn’t your first language, we do need a certificate and we accept IELTS with an overall score of 6.5 and no less than 6 in any band.  

However, again, we can consider alternative test certificates and we can make exemptions as well based on individual circumstances. 
 

So again, if you’ve got English as a second language and you want to have a quick discussion with the admissions team about whether you’d be a suitable fit to join this programme, please do get in touch and we’ll speak to you on an individual basis about that as well. 
 

So our application process is really very straightforward. We just need your degree certificate or a transcript confirming your predicted overall grade, a CV or resume and your English language certificate if those are applicable to you. And for anyone who’s applying via that non-standard entry criteria, we would also need a personal statement as well.  

And the deadline is just a few weeks away. So if anyone is interested in joining us from the 31st of August, you’ll need to get your application in to us before the 7th so that we can get that all processed for you. So please do contact our admissions team to discuss. I think that’s everything. So thank you so much. I think we’ll have time to take some questions now. 
 

And so let’s take a look and see if we’ve got anything that’s come through in the Q&A window. 

 
Bence Palfi 
There was another question specifically about human interaction research. And to that, what I wanted to say is we have a very large computer science department here at Goldsmiths. They also run online MScs as well. But what is more important that they have many people who are also doing research and teaching in the human-AI interaction topic.  

But also within the psychology department, there are other colleagues as well who are interested in this topic. So my answer is definitely yes. It’s not just me, a unique person, or doing this research alone here. So you would likely have opportunity, yes, to do if you, for instance, want to do research in this topic as part of your master’s programme, to reach out to these people and work with them. 

 
Megan Thompson   
Brilliant, thank you. So we’ve got another question saying, “what’s the weekly study hours commitment and will we need to join live or in person?”  

So I think we’ve already covered that, but did you want to talk a little bit more around sort of weekly study hours or anything else there, Bence? 

 
Bence Palfi   31:17 
No, I think we covered this, but I can just repeat that it’s roughly 15 hours and we made an attempt to make this quite uniquely, or sorry, uniformly distributed, as in evenly distributed across weeks. So there are no weeks when you have to invest way more time than at other weeks. 
 
Maybe, okay, maybe something we haven’t touched upon is that, so we have 8 weeks for each module, which we mentioned, but we have this structure of five weeks focusing on content and then three weeks focusing on preparation for the final coursework or any sort of assessment that you will have for that specific module. 
 

So we condensed the learning about methods and content into five weeks, and then you will have plenty of time to prepare, either alone or as part of a group, depending on the type of assessment that will happen in that module, with lots of scaffolding as well.  

So we will not leave you alone for three weeks, but we provide you with lots of scaffolding supporting materials on how you can prepare your coursework or prepare for that exam or whatever will be at the end of that module, the best. 

 
Megan Thompson  
Perfect, thank you. And do you complete one module at a time before then progressing on to the other is another question we’ve had come through. 

 
Bence Palfi  
Yes, and the answer is yes. So you will, if you do the part-time, which currently we only offer the part-time, you will have to do one module at a time. 

 
Megan Thompson 
Okay. And another one, “nice to meet you all. Is there supervision for the dissertation?” 

 
Bence Palfi    
Yes, there is supervision for the dissertation. And we will also offer, again, this as a group option as well, depending on obviously the number of students in your cohort.  

But what we hope is that in the future, people will be able to choose between doing dissertation as part of a group or or alone, depending on which pathway they prefer, and there will be supervision offered as well. 

 
Megan Thompson  
Brilliant. And for the group work, if people are sort of our international learners who are maybe based in different time zones, is there a way for people to sort of sync up with people that are local to them or, you know, so that they’re not having to wake up at all hours of the night to get on with work? How does the group work structure? 

 
Bence Palfi    

I think this is something we will have to, yes, pay attention when we assign people to groups, but I think this is also why we will likely leave you with the power of making the decision with whom do you want to get into one group, especially for larger projects.  

Maybe for smaller projects, it’s not an issue when you don’t have to meet 
in a meeting and you can discuss things via e-mail, but certainly for larger projects, we would want to make it possible for you to, yes, collaborate as much as possible. And then obviously it would make it difficult if you come from very different time zones. 

 
Megan Thompson   
Perfect. Okay, it doesn’t look like we’ve had any more questions come in. So unless anyone else has anything, oh, we’ve got one more come in from Sophie. So Sophie’s asked, “can I do a real life work based project for my dissertation?” 

 
Bence Palfi   34:49 
Yes, I think yes, with the ethics application, we were thinking to provide a template projects, but we will definitely leave an option for people to do their own projects.  

These are always depending also on or condition on finding the right supervisor for that project. But real life work based, as far as I understand, what do you mean by that should be possible as long as it can go through an ethics review and it is approved as in the proposed project is meeting the requirements of that, an ethical study. 

 
Megan Thompson 
Okay, and we’ve also, we’ve had another question come in from Marie who said, “is the £5,000 discount available for part-time students who want to start in August 2026?”  

So yes, Marie, the discount is available for anyone who’s applying onto the MA or the MSC for this August.  

So the postgraduate diploma and the postgraduate certificate aren’t applicable. But if you are applying to study on the master’s programmes, either the MA or the MSc pathway, both will be eligible for the £5,000 discount.  

So if you want any more information about our scholarship, you can scan through on the QR code there or e-mail the online admissions team and we’ll be happy to talk to you about that when we’ve got your application in. 

 
So I think those are all the questions that we’ve had so far. We do have a couple more minutes if anyone wants to submit anything else or like I said, please do feel free to follow up with the team and we can direct you as well towards Bence if you have any specific questions about the programme itself and want a bit more 
information from him as well.  

So yeah, thank you so much for your time today, everyone. And thank you, Dr. Bence, for your time as well and presenting the slides. The recording will be available afterwards, so we’ll send that out to everyone so you can review it if there’s anything that you maybe missed or if you didn’t quite catch the start. 

 
And, we look forward to talking with you all soon and hopefully seeing some of you in August. 

 
Bence Palfi  
Thanks everyone for showing up and the great questions. 

 
Megan Thompson  
Thank you. Okay, bye.