Critically evaluate the psychological underpinnings of a range of digital behaviour.
Apply theories and empirical research to explain behaviour across different forms of technology.
Critically evaluate how cyberpsychology informs and enhances the development of technology and software design for everyday use.
Consider positive and negative impacts of digital behaviour on online and offline behaviour.

Introduction

As part of your summative assessment, you must complete this workbook. The workbook provides structured guidance and support for all elements of the assessment and each week you will directed to work through a specific section by an activity in your classroom. Some weeks include written tasks within the workbook, and these must be completed. The workbook is organised to work through alongside the micro-lectures, tasks, and discussions; therefore, we advise you to work in sequence rather than rushing through the content.

The assessment elements are:

1. Completed workbook.	15%
a. Workbook tasks (500-100 words)	(5%)
b. Reflection on slide development (250 words)	(5%)
c. Reflection on module (500 words)	(5%)
2. PowerPoint presentation (3 slides) and written narrative (450 words)	15%
3. Written report (1,500 words)	70%

Please note the usual 10% leeway on word count does not apply to this assignment.

You should download and save this workbook so that you can complete the relevant sections as you progress.

You must submit all three elements (workbook, presentation and narrative, and written report) to pass this module. The submission deadline is 2pm on Monday of Week 8.

Assessment Overview

Workbook

You should complete the workbook as you work through the activities each week. This will provide a supporting structure to aid the completion of all components of the assessment. Workbook tasks include:

Week 1

Pull and push factors for websites and app.

Week 2

Select an app or website for your assessment and write a brief rationale for your choice.

Create a work plan for assessment completion.

Week 3

Create a literature table.

You will also include your slide development reflection (Week 4) and module reflection (Week 8) in the workbook.

Slide Creation and Narration

You will need to create a three-slide PowerPoint presentation, which need to be accompanied by a 450-word written narrative. The presentation is designed to kick start your thinking process for the report and further detail is provided in the relevant week.

Report

Imagine that an organisation has employed you to enhance positive engagement with their online website or mobile phone App.

Your task is to review the website or app, and apply your knowledge of psychological theories and research to produce three recommendations for enhancing positive engagement with the website or app.

You will write a report which will discuss at least two opposing theories and relevant research relating to enhancing positive engagement. This should not be generic, but should be directly relevant to the website or app. For example, you may find research about the website or app specifically, or you may find research about features of the website or app which you can relate. This section will form an evidence base for three recommendations for enhancing positive engagement with the website or app.

Your report should follow this structure:

Introduction (2 points)

Theories and Research (10 points)

Three Recommendations (45 points)

Conclusion (8 points)

Week One

This week, your task is to start brainstorming for your assessment.

Task 1: Push and Pull Factors

Push factors:

Pull factors:

Week Two

This week you need to do two things:

Identify a website or mobile phone App suitable for use in your assessment.
Formulate a workplan for assessment completion.

Task 2: Identify a Suitable Website/App

This week you need to consider websites and apps and select a suitable one for the assessment. Think about the push and pull factors you listed in Week 1. You need to select a website or app that engages (or should engage) people. This assessment is not about people engaging with each other through a website or app, but rather people engaging with the website/app directly. Therefore, a consumer focus is appropriate here.

Please do not select sites or apps where you require an account to engage (e.g., Facebook, WhatsApp, banking apps) as markers will not be able to view these.

Paste a link to the website here – you need to make sure the link is live and works when you submit your assessment. Failure to do so may result in your work not being graded. If you are using a mobile phone App, you may take a screenshot and paste it here:

Website link/App:

Task 3: Write a rationale for your choice

This should be a brief narrative (250 words max) explaining why you selected this website/app to explore positive engagement.

Task 4: Workplan Creation

Formulate a workplan to demonstrate your planned approach to completing the work necessary for submission in Week 8.

This is an excellent transferable skill to develop and will help you to stay on track for this module’s assessment. You will need to decide how you would like to present your workplan: It can be a table, Gantt chart, list – the options are endless, but it must include a week-by-week breakdown of what you plan to do for the rest of the module in addition to the scheduled workbook contributions.

You should include a detailed breakdown of tasks rather than just a high-level list of key tasks. Think about the steps you will need to take to achieve each task e.g., identifying key words for a literature search.

Insert your workplan here:

Week Three

Task 5: Literature Review

Developing your literature review to identify relevant theories and research is an ongoing task which should be started this week.

To get started, use key words to search the literature using library databases. If it is your first time doing this, you may find the Study Guides on the WLV Library website useful.

https://www.wlv.ac.uk/lib/skills-for-learning/study-guides/

You should identify relevant theories and create a table to highlight similarities and differences between theories. Add in a list of research that supports/does not support each theory. Then think about the relevance to your website or app of interest. This sounds like a mammoth task, but using a structure like this will really help you find those links between theory and application within the work. The table is for your own use and should not be included in the workbook.

Handy Hint: Many of you will ask how many papers or book chapters you will need to read for this. The answer really is ‘how long is a piece of string?’ – You need to include as much reading as you think you need to evidence your statements and arguments. You will need to read beyond the lecture content to achieve a distinction. Do some research! Look for reliable resources from the library databases, or Google Scholar.

Week Four

Task 6: Slide Creation

Once you have completed the first stages of your literature review, you can use it to create three slides using PowerPoint:

Slide 1: What is the website/App and what are the key push and pull factors of the website? It will help if you think about your list from week one and relate those to your chosen website/App.

Slide 2: What are the two relevant and opposing theories that you could use to evidence the push and pull factors of the website/App?

Slide 3: Create a graphic to demonstrate the how you can link the theories to your website/app.

Task 7: Slide Narration

You also need to provide a narration for the slides. This should be completed as a written commentary which is submitted in Word or PDF format alongside your slides in Week 8. It is your responsibility to ensure that this is accessible to your marker, failure to do so will result in a zero percent award for this part of the workbook. Your narration should not exceed 450 words (roughly 150 per slide) and should not be the same as the words on the slides.

Please don’t overcrowd your slides! It can be very tempting to cram too much information onto them, but that makes it difficult to pinpoint the really important information you are trying to convey.

You must submit a PowerPoint file with your slides and a Word/PDF file with your written narration in Week 8, alongside the completed workbook and the report.

Failure to include the slides and narration will result in an automatic fail.

Handy Hint: Think about our slides on the module’s micro-lectures. What works for you? Do you like sparse slides that require more spoken or written additional information? Imagine you are sitting through the slides, and someone is talking you through them.

Self-plagiarising: It is important that you do not use the 450 words written here for your final report – that would be self-plagiarism and result in a zero-mark grade for the workbook assessment.

Task 8: Slide Creation Reflection

Once you feel that you have completed your slide presentation and narration to a satisfactory level, please reflect on the experience below. Reflections should be written in the first person, but they should incorporate different levels of reflection from descriptive through diagnostic and critical. Please see page 4 of Introducing Reflective Practice by Professor Alex Forsythe for more detail on these levels. There is a link provided in the relevant activity this week.

SLIDE CREATION REFLECTION – 250 WORDS

Week Five

Take a breather from the assessment – we don’t want you to do anything new for the assessment this week other than make sure you have caught up on any reading, order your notes, make sense of what you have done so far and just let it all sit with you for a while. It is important to let your brain catch up sometimes!

You can focus on this week’s content and resume your assessment-related work in Week 6.

Week Six

This week, you need to begin to put your report together. Please don’t leave this until Week 8 as you need to work through the content both in the written context and in your thinking. Also, first drafts are rarely those that achieve good grades!

So, this week is about beginning to build the report structure and thinking about how the literature sits within that structure.

Task 9: Structure Assessment (first half) and begin writing

This week, create a structure for your 1500-word report. That should include space for:

brief and generic introduction of topic – could include information around escalating Internet use; relevance of understanding the psychological properties related to website and App use.
narrowing down to relevant literature to outline two opposing theories.
research to back up each theory and build a picture of two theories that really say different things about your chosen website. For example, what research backs up Theory 1 and why does it not support Theory 2?
How are you going to use these theories in relation to the website/App?

We are not going to give you an exact word count on how much of your report that should take up – enough to be clear, not so many that you leave no room for the rest of the report in Weeks 7 and 8! Ideally, we would expect around half of this type of report to focus on the literature and outlining of the theories.

Now, populate each section with your first draft.

Week Seven

Task 10: Structure Assessment (second half) and begin writing

This week you will focus on your second half of the report which will consist of the three recommendations to the company on how to make their website/App more engaging.

This is not as straightforward as you might at first think!

You really need to get to grips with those theories and provide a good integration of each one with the website.

Example: I don’t want to give you too much of an example as I don’t want you to take it literally! However, one line of thought might be:

Website X is visually appealing (reference) and uses engaging colours (reference). The follow on click throughs are very straightforward once found. But according to theory XYZ, this could be made more user friendly, and hence more appealing, by making them stand out. Research ABC has shown that when participants were able to quickly and easily follow through with clicks to where they wanted to go, they were more likely to purchase health-related products. Given that this website is focused on selling health-related products, the website designers could also …. However, Theory MNO suggests the opposite and states that …. There is research to support this from … who showed that …. There is thus a literature contradiction which the website designers would need to consolidate. They could combine some of these theoretical notions however by doing A, B and C to bring together these aspects of the theories …

I hope this illustrates how you can build up each of your three chosen recommendations. It is purely for illustration and your narrative might look very different to this.

Important Points for Inclusion:

Evidence critical thinking and reasoning
Synthesis of theoretical and practical knowledge (integration of theory and research with practical solutions for website/App owners)

You might use screengrabs to illustrate your recommendations, but please do remember not to download or include any copyrighted content.

Week 8

This week you should write your final version of the report. Please make sure you leave yourself time to format it correctly and check your referencing against the APA guidelines.

Please do also leave yourself enough time to write your module assessment reflection which also needs to be uploaded before the assessment deadline in Week 8. You can use the submission checklist below (end of Week 8) to make sure that you submit all the necessary components for this module’s assessment.

Task 11: Finetune your report.

Proofread! Proofread and proofread again!
Make sure the in-text references are correct and appropriately formatted.
Make sure your reference list reflects in-text citations and is not a reading list.
Make sure all written work is size 12 font with 1.5 line spacing.

We will be very strict with the 1500-word count on this report. The reason for this is that if it was a real commission from a real company, they would not have a ‘word leeway’ – they would probably give you an online form to complete that only allows 1500 words. Therefore, you need to be really strict with yourselves on this please. We will not read anything over 1500 words on this assessment report.

Task 12: Module Reflection

Your final task for this module is to write a 500-word reflection, which you can write below, on your experience of the module. You might consider what felt difficult or easy; your level of engagement with the tasks; relevance of the work to your own life, and the like. We are really interested in YOUR experience and how YOU felt throughout the module. Make sure you are engaging in diagnostic and critical reflection, not just descriptive. As with the slide development reflection, refer to Introducing Reflective Practice by Professor Alex Forsythe. Do bear the 500-word count in mind!

MODULE REFLECTION – 500 WORDS

Task 13: Final Submission

Upload all required elements to the submission portal in your classroom.

It is your responsibility to make sure that everything required has been included for final grading, in the correct format (Word, PDF, Powerpoint).

Completed workbook (Word of PDF format)
Slides (Powerpoint or PDF format)
Written slide narration (Word format)
Report (Word format)

Marking Descriptors

DISTINCTION	COMMENDATION	PASS	FAIL
Outstanding: 95 Excellent: 85 Very good: 75, 77	Good: 62, 65, 68	Clear Pass: 52, 55, 58	Marginal Fail: 48, 45, 42 Clear Fail: 38, 35, 32, 25 Little or Nothing of Merit: 10, 0
The assessed work will demonstrate:	The assessed work will demonstrate:	The assessed work will demonstrate:	Work of insufficient quality to achieve a Pass standard. ‘Fail’ grade work may suffer from some or all the following issues:
· An in-depth and systematic conceptual understanding of the topic · All the elements of the question set have been addressed · Independent thought, rather than relying simply on the ideas of others, perhaps as contained in the prescribed reading of the module · Reading beyond that specified by the module author, reflecting a broad literature review, where appropriate · Reading with a critical understanding · Ability to evaluate theoretical concepts and draw appropriate conclusions · Where appropriate, reflective and critical application/integration of theoretical concepts to empirical and practical issues · An ability to analyse and synthesise information presenting material using structured, logical discussion and critical argument · Clarity and conciseness, well-constructed and articulate writing that will be presented to a high standard using academic/professional language · APA (7th Ed.) Referencing	· A good conceptual understanding of the topic · That all the key elements of the question set will have been addressed · Some evidence of independent thought rather than relying simply on the ideas of others, perhaps as contained in the prescribed reading of the module · Evidence of reading beyond that specified by the module guide · Evidence of a good grasp of prescribed literature · An ability to evaluate theoretical concepts and draw appropriate conclusions · An ability to apply theoretical concepts to empirical and practical issues · Clarity and conciseness, well-constructed and articulate writing that will be presented to a high standard using academic/ professional language · Accurate and consistent use of the appropriate referencing system · Clear and concise written expression · Reference complete and consistent with Psychology Subject Group guidelines	· Satisfactory conceptual understanding of the topic · That some of the key elements of the question set will have been addressed · Some evidence of independent thought rather than relying simply on the ideas of others, perhaps as contained in the prescribed reading of the module · Some familiarity with, and satisfactory understanding of, prescribed literature · Some evidence of application of theoretical concepts to empirical and practical issues, and integrating theory and practice · PASS grade work may suffer from some or all the following issues: · Inclusion of some materials not directly relevant to the set question · Providing an incomplete answer to the set question · Weaknesses in structure or in clarity · Some errors in referencing in terms of the use of the appropriate referencing system and/or consistency	· Achievement of very few/none of the module learning outcomes · Completely fails to address the question set (e.g., student has written at length about the wrong topic) · Token or no attempt to integrate theory and practice · Little or no understanding of theoretical and empirical considerations · Little or no reference to appropriate literature · Little or no evidence that the student has grasped key ideas · Unduly descriptive and/or lacks analysis · Badly presented · References largely incomplete and not consistent with Psychology Subject Group guidelines · An assessment offence has been committed · Is submitted in contravention of University submission regulations

Module Assessment Rubrics

	Submitted	Not Submitted	Grade
Completed workbook (see page 3 for full list) (5%)
Slide presentation and narration (15%)
Slide creation reflection (5%)
Module reflection (5%)
Week 8 report (70%)
OVERALL GRADE

Completed Workbook

	Distinction	Commendation	Pass	Fail
Workbook submitted and word count (1000) not exceeded (1%)
Pros and cons of websites/mobile phone apps (1%)
Website link included (1%)
Narrative of website choice included (1%)
Workplan (1%)
Word count not exceeded (1000 words max)
OVERALL GRADE

Slide Presentation and Narration

	Distinction	Commendation	Pass	Fail
Three slides included
Narration included that does not exceed 450 words
Slide 1: Includes pro/cons of website/app (4%)
Slide 2: Details two opposing and relevant theories (4%)
Slide 3: Details brainstorming process (4%)
Overall presentation (3%)
OVERALL GRADE

Slide Creation Reflection

	Distinction	Commendation	Pass	Fail
Reflection does not exceed 250 words (2%)
First person account that conveys experience including feelings, thoughts and emotions of creating the slide presentation (3%)
OVERALL GRADE

Module Reflection

	Distinction	Commendation	Pass	Fail
Reflection does not exceed 500 words (2%)
First person account that conveys thoughts and feelings of the student’s module experience, including what they have gained from the module (3%)
OVERALL GRADE

Report

	Distinction	Commendation	Pass	Fail
Introduction: clear, concise and sets the scene of the report (2%)
Relevant literature, include theories and research that has been linked to the focused website/app (10%)
Three clear core recommendations included for website/app improvement. Each recommendation needs to be linked to theory and research (45%)
Relevant, concise conclusion derived from outlined theory and research (8%)
Academic writing style (2%)
1500-word limit not exceeded (2%)
Referencing – APA 7 (1%)
OVERALL GRADE

Thank you!

We hope you have
enjoyed the module.