Business Psychology

On completing this degree, you’ll come away with the understanding, theory, and expertise needed to enter the changing business environment and to innovate and solve problems simultaneously across disciplines and borders. You’ll be equipped with a scientific understanding of the mind, brain, behaviour and experience, and how they interact with the complex environments in which they exist. You’ll also gain skills and tools for exploring experiences and behaviour, culminating in an ability to conduct psychological and business research independently.

By engaging in a distinctive programme of psychology and business education, you’ll be able to unleash your creativity and demonstrate enterprising behaviour through skills-based professional and personal development, which ultimately prepares you to be adaptable and opportunity ready. We’ll help you to develop the knowledge and skills that enable progression to a range of employment or postgraduate study in related applied psychological and business contexts.

Year one
In your first year, you’ll be grounded in the fundamentals of psychological science and business psychology whilst beginning your journey with enterprise thinking. You’ll gain a grounding in psychology and business psychology, including organisational behaviour and management as well as discovering research methods to back up your learning. We’ll also explore psychology in the workplace through the lens of diversity and individual differences.

Year two
Within your second year, you’ll improve your understanding of the core content areas in psychology whilst advancing your understanding of business psychology in the real world through contemporary applications of business psychology. You’ll have the opportunity to pick optional modules exploring themes such as human resources, international business, entrepreneurship, operations and project management. You can also opt into a placement module as part of your course.

Year three
Your last year culminates with an independent research project within business psychology. You’ll also have the opportunity to take part in group work, using your skills in a real-world context to generate solutions based in psychological science. You’ll explore how workplaces can foster health and wellbeing for their employees, and you’ll be able to choose optional modules to explore new areas or continue the specialties from your second year.

Students will be supported in their development towards summative assessment by appropriate formative exercises.

Assessment is continuous, and can include:

• Essays
• Examinations
• Group presentations
• Research-based reports
• Academic posters.

We’ll provide you with regular feedback on how you're doing and give you regular guidance on how to improve your skills, knowledge and understanding.

Teaching is through a mix of lectures, seminars, individual tutorials and practical lessons.

Seminars are usually more informal than lectures – they're opportunities for you to discuss, ask questions and get involved in activities and debates. Bookable tutorials enable you to have one-to-one discussions with staff.

You’ll be taught by experienced and respected University staff. Throughout the course they’ll introduce you to their specialisms and research interests.

You’ll also benefit from visiting speakers – these include those from external industries, specialist researchers and international visitors.

To find out more about how we teach and how you'll learn, please read our Learning and Teaching Delivery Statement.

This Psychology course is taught at our Newton Park campus. You'll have access to a wide range of excellent facilities including:

• Commons building
• Newton Park library
• Virtual Learning Environment.

We encourage you to undertake placement opportunities where possible, especially in your second year. We hope to offer a work placement module during the second year that students can opt into in addition to, or separately from, the elective Professional Placement Year.

Our students may also make use of part-funded Santander internship and placement opportunities.

BSc Business Psychology graduates are well placed to move straight into employment within a variety of organizations, but will also have the numeracy, scientific, and people skills gained on our degree to undertake postgraduate education at the Master's and PhD levels.

At the end of the academic year, we award prizes to recognise achievements in academic success and reward effort and excellence. Prizes specific to Psychology are:

• Oxford University Press Prize for Best Dissertation

If you’re a full-time undergraduate student starting your first year at Bath Spa University, you can apply for the Certificate in Global Citizenship, which you’ll study alongside your degree.

You’ll gain global awareness and add an international dimension to your student experience, and funding is available. On successful completion of the programme, you’ll be awarded a Certificate in Global Citizenship. This is in addition to your degree; it doesn’t change your degree title or results.

The Professional Placement Year (PPY) provides you with the opportunity to identify, apply for, and secure professional experience, normally comprising one to three placements over a minimum of nine months. Successful completion of this module will demonstrate your ability to secure and sustain graduate-level employment.

By completing the module, you'll be entitled to the addition of 'with Professional Placement Year' to your degree title.

Before your PPY, you'll work to identify roles of interest and secure a placement. The Placements Team will support through timetabled sessions and 1:1 appointments.

As well as completing a minimum of 900 placement hours, you will complete two assessments demonstrating your skill development, growth in professional behaviours and how the PPY has impacted your future career aspirations.