MSc Handbook - Online resources - IT services, VLE and others

Overview

Making effective use of online resources and IT services is a essential part of studying Psychology at York.

The University is a very big organisation, and there are a large number of different systems used by students and staff in their work.  See information on the facilities and services IT Services provides.

It is important to understand that in addition to the resources provided to all students by the University, there are specific resources that are available to you as Psychology students; these are provided by the Department (i.e., by the teaching staff, technicians and administrative staff that you see every day in the building). These include the pages you are viewing now (Student Documentation), the content of the Psychology VLE modules (which support the parts of the course you are currently taking and are updated, week-by-week, by your lecturers), and the departmental website (which provides an overview of everything we do and has less detail about day-to-day teaching and learning). In addition to these systems which provide you with information, you will also need to get used to communicating with the department, often by email.

Student Homepage

The University of York Student Homepage is the central authoritative point for student information with helpful information such as health and wellbeing advice and information on finance and accommodation for example.

Edit

From here you can access your email, the VLE, your personal timetable and calendar, e:vision (top menu bar) and helpful information about support welfare and health, housing and money and other topics (left menus).

If you are new to the University, you may find the following Introdution to IT Services pages useful.

This Student Documentation Site

This student documentation site (i.e., the website you are now viewing)  is one of the important sources of information, and you should look here first if you have questions about Departmental and University procedures or the way the course is structured. It is based on a wiki system (a bit like wikipedia) which allows staff to update and improve the way that we provide information - if you find any gaps or errors, you should let us know, so that we can fix them right away.

This handbook focuses on key information about Departmental contacts, facilities and procedures that you'll need to understand, for example, we cover the rules that determine your progression through the course and how your final mark is calculated, information about departmental committees and course reps

When you view the student documentation pages you will typically see a "navigation tree" on the left hand side of the page - you can turn this off, but it is not a good idea. You should notice that the pages are organised hierarchically, so there will often be subsections to explore. You can also search using the box that appears just above the navigation tree.

The Yorkshare VLE

VLE stands for Virtual Learning Environment, and you may have encountered VLEs at school or college. The University's VLE is sometimes referred to as Yorkshare,

The department makes extensive use of the Yorkshare VLE to provide detailed and up-to-date information about the modules you are currently taking. Your module organisers are responsible for this information and they will typically update the VLE during the course, so please log in regularly to check.

When you log into the VLE you will find (on the left hand side of the page) a list of modules that you are enrolled on. The list you see depends on what stage you are at in the course, so first years see information about first year modules and so on. The VLE is where your current teachers will provide information about the modules you are currently undertaking. For example, they will typically provide powerpoint slides from the lectures, reading lists, information about the topics of different lectures and tutorials and how to prepare for them. Most of our lectures are also recorded ('Class Capture'), so that you can view or listen to them again later.

Visit each module/strand page regularly to find out about the latest announcements and to get the key information you need for your preparation, revision and independent study.