Here you will find a range of information that will be useful to teaching staff when planning and running courses and exams in the Department of Psychology.
Students have their own portal and it may be helpful to see the information they have access to.
The psychology degree programme is determined by the academic regulations. Find the academic regulations here.
Most of the study programme is compulsory, but a number of elective courses are available at both Bachelor’s and Master’s level. The elective courses are registered together with the descriptions of the compulsory courses.
To offer a seminar, contact the coordinator/chair of your affiliated subject group. PhD students usually belong to the same subject group as their supervisor. Every year in April and October, the coordinator/subject group chair calls for courses for the following year, which is approximately 10 months later. Provide the title of your proposed course. A few months later, provide a more detailed description. The description will be published in the course catalogue.
See the course catalogue for descriptions of all available courses.
The descriptions contain information on academic objectives, content, teaching methods, expectations for the students, and exams. It must always be stated whether written exams must be answered in Danish, English, or can be answered in both languages. Please note that Norwegian and Swedish are on par with Danish as an exam language.
All descriptions must be approved by the Board of Studies for Psychology.
In the months of November and May, students select courses based on the descriptions in the course catalogue. Courses with low registration numbers may be cancelled. If your course is cancelled in the upcoming semester, you will be notified immediately after the registration period.
All teaching activities are planned in accordance with the general principles for timetable planning on full-time degree programmes at Aarhus BSS.
This means that "The teaching takes place Monday to Thursday 8am-6pm and Friday 8am-4pm. VIPs are available for teaching during this time period, and special circumstances must be approved by the head of department of the individual VIP at all times, and for the specific semester".
Timetables will be made available to students prior to their enrolment in the elective courses for the coming semester, between 1st and 5th of May and 1st and 5th of November respectively. The teaching period for most courses is 15 weeks (typically, week 5 to 19 in the spring and week 35 to 50 in the autumn).
The course syllabus is selected by the lecturer/course coordinator and must be approved by the Board of Studies for Psychology before the start of the semester, except for seminars.
The syllabus for the bachelor seminars in the 5th semester is 500 pages, while that for Master's seminars is 1,250 pages. The lecturer informs the students of the syllabus at the latest at the beginning of the course.
Please note that the size of a syllabus is given in standard pages. The lecturer converts the number of text pages, including the list of references, into standard pages using the following conversion factors:
Book/one-column article: 1.2
Two-column and three-column article: 1.8
The library will produce the approved syllabus in an online reference list available on Brightspace. If you would like a similar syllabus list of course literature, please contact your liaison librarian at AU Library.
It is not permitted to post copyrighted texts in Brightspace for students, but links can be provided to texts which can be accessed via the Royal Danish Library. For information on copyright rules, please see information and resources available at AU Library, and please see AU's agreement with COPYDAN.
Aarhus University is a campus-based institution, where teaching is conducted on-site rather than online. Students are not entitled to request online sessions. If you wish to make extensive use of online elements in your course, this must be approved by the Board of Studies for Psychology.
Students who are part of the AU Dual Career programme for elite athletes and entrepreneurs and have special conditions for classroom participation (read more about the academic assistant programme) are encouraged to contact their lecturers if they have a need to have a class recorded or streamed. To ensure a smooth streaming/recording process, the students are requested to apply at least one week prior to the scheduled class. As a lecturer, you reserve the right to decline this request. It is recommended to refrain from allowing streaming/recording if case material or copyrighted content is used in teaching.
If you choose to grant permission for streaming/recording, it is important to inform all students that the recording will take place.
For further information on GDPR, please consult the Guidelines for streaming and recording classes at Aarhus University.
A guide to using panopto, and a guide to Zoom, for streaming/recording is available.
To ensure the highest quality of education, all courses at AU are evaluated by the students. As low response rates are a challenge for PSY, it is recommended that 10 minutes of class time be allocated for evaluation. Students should be reminded that their feedback is valuable for improving future teaching. They should provide specific examples of what they liked about the teaching and what could be improved. It is recommended to kindly remind students to provide constructive evaluations without resorting to personal or demeaning comments about the lecturer.
Evaluations play a crucial role in the development of teaching (and teaching portfolios). A low response rate may indicate that only dissatisfied respondents have evaluated your course.
The course evaluation can be tailored to suit your specific course. Learn more about how to improve the response rate and the options available.
The director of studies may contact the teaching staff to discuss the evaluation results.
| Bachelor’s Degree Programme | |
| Social & Personality Psychology | Henrik Høgh-Olesen |
| Cognitive Psychology | Dorthe Berntsen |
| Developmental Psychology | Peter Krøjgaard |
| Work and Organisational Psychology | Thomas Jønsson |
| Educational Psychology | Klaus Nielsen |
| Clinical Psychology | Rikke Lambek & Lynn Ann Watson |
| The Foundation and Perspective of Psychology | Simon Ozer |
| Neuroscientific Psychology | Lene Vase |
| Qualitative Research Methods (RM2) | Jesper Aagaard & Charlotte Jonasson |
| Statistics (RM1) | Laila Nockur & Mai Bjørnskov Mikkelsen |
| Quantitative Research Methods (RM3) | Dorthe Kirkegaard Thomsen |
| Psychology Disemmination | Jacob Klitmøller & Klaus Nielsen |
| Psychiatry | Mimi Mehlsen |
| Master’s Degree Programme | |
| Basic subject A, Clinical Psychology | Mia Skytte O’Toole |
| Work and Organisational Psychology (basic subject B) | Thomas Jønsson |
| Basic subject B, Educational Psychology | Klaus Nielsen |
| Intervention Method | Maja O’Connor |
| Test & Evaluation Method | Helle Spindler & Rikke Lambek |
| Design and Project Planning (RM4) | Ali Amidi |
| Project Placement (internship) | Lynn Watson, Helle Spindler, Malene Damholdt |
Teaching hours are registered in the system "Inddatering".
All employees can access their teaching accounts. You are responsible for registering your teaching hours.
| Position | Teaching Norm (hours) | Period |
| Professor/associate professor | 390 | Per semester |
| Assistant professor | 312 | Per semester |
| PhD | 420 | In total during the enrolment period |
See the Department of Psychology and Behavioural Sciences policies for more information.
In connection with obtaining funding, you may be granted a workload reduction for a period of time. For example, a one-month workload reduction is equivalent to one month of employment. This means that if you are granted a three-month workload reduction, you will not have to teach for three months. The duration of the workload reduction must be agreed upon with the subject group chair, who must ensure that the teaching can be carried out. Due to the overall workload, it is not possible to completely exempt you from thesis supervision in the spring semester.
Bachelor's projects are normally written in conjunction with the bachelor seminars, and with the associated lecturer as supervisor. It is possible for the individual student to arrange with another lecturer to supervise the exam paper. This must be made known when the call for external examiners is issued.
Read more about the Bachelor's project (in Danish).
Please note that as the supervisor of the Bachelor's project, you will also have to be the co-examiner for the final oral presentation. This means that you will be the assessor for a) the Bachelor's project, graded assessment with external co-examiner, and b) the oral presentation, pass/fail with internal co-examiner.
Students choose their own thesis topic and submit a request for a specific supervisor. The supervisor is not expected to be able to provide guidance on specific content in the thesis.
Find info on the MA thesis, formal requirements and versions (in Danish).
As a supervisor, you must be aware that students choose one of three prototypical thesis versions. It is advisable to inform the co-examiner whether the Master’s thesis is empirical, or article based. This must be indicated on the co-examiner form.
Master's thesis students request a supervisor when registering for courses in either November (for the spring semester) or May (for the autumn semester). If you are not a full-time lecturer, please contact Carsten Dalsager, Head of the Department Secretariat, so that you can be added to the list of thesis supervisors. It is possible to agree to supervise specific theses in addition to the number of theses allocated to a full-time member of staff.
Supervisors are selected by students based on the supervisor letter you have published on the staff homepage. The letter should describe your approach to supervision and the framework set for the supervision. It is important to specify whether group supervision is offered or only individual supervision, and whether online supervision is available. The allocation for an individual Master's thesis is 15 hours, and for a double thesis it is 22.5 hours.
Once you have been assigned Master's thesis students, we recommend that you send them a short email with an introduction to the upcoming supervision process. Contact the student no later than at the start of the thesis semester. Yet, it is the student's responsibility to maintain contact with the supervisor. Communication must take place via the student’s AU email.
At the beginning of the Master’s thesis semester, students are asked to upload a topic description/preliminary problem statement to WISEflow. This must then be approved by the supervisor. If the student does not upload a topic description, or if the supervisor does not approve it, there will be no consequences for the process. Yet, it is recommended that supervisors actively approve problem statements in WISEflow to avoid anxious enquiries from students. Students will receive a message in their e-Boks about unapproved problem statements.
If this is the student’s second or third attempt, the student must upload a revision of the first problem statement for approval by the supervisor. Again, failure to do so will not affect the process.
Please note that the revision of the problem statement at the second and third attempts must not be of a nature that requires more work from the student. The revision should not extend the duration of the degree programme.
About one month before the submission deadline, a co-examiner is found via the submitted form for appointing an external co-examiner.
Find the form for appointing an external co-examiner (in Danish).
Fill out the form and send it to bdagerskov@psy.au.dk
Master's theses and other written exam papers containing data or case material may be confidential or may require a data use agreement. It is the student's responsibility to familiarise themselves with AU's policy in this area (in Danish), and you as the supervisor should be familiar with the policy.
If a Master's thesis has received a grade of 12 and you consider it to be a particularly good thesis, it can be included in the list of Top Master's theses.
For more information, please refer to Top Master's theses.
It is important to note that not all Master's theses with a grade of 12 are distinguished in such a way that they can be included in the list of Top Master's theses. It should also be noted that confidential Master's theses that are not published can be included with title and author name.
The types of examination are typically registered during the course registration process, which usually takes place about 10 months prior to the start of the semester in which the course is offered. There are various types of exams available, including oral, written, on-site exams with or without aids, and take-home assignments with a set question or a self-chosen problem statement. It is important to note that any alterations to the exam form compared to previous semesters must be approved by the Board of Studies for Psychology. Therefore, any proposed changes to the exam form must be submitted to the Board of Studies for Psychology at least one year before the semester in which the changes are intended to be implemented.
When preparing a detailed course description for the course catalogue, you may alter the exam form or academic requirements based on previous semesters. However, it is important to note that any alterations made should not affect the already registered type of examination and information about the exam, such as the exam time, aids, assessment form, or form of co-examination. For example, it is acceptable to adjust the number of questions or the number of pages of the exam paper to suit the academic objectives or the timetable.
The course coordinator is responsible for preparing the exam questions. When preparing set exam questions, it is important that neither the questions nor the case material are copies of previous exam questions. If in doubt, consult the director of studies.
For all written exams, before submitting exam questions to the administration, a colleague in the research section or another course lecturer must check them. The course coordinator is responsible for this.
For Master’s level seminars, you must specify the exam form at registration of the seminar (please note that the exam form and seminar name cannot be changed once the course has been registered). There are four exam forms to choose from:
Written exam paper on an individually chosen problem statement within the topics of the seminar. Maximum 20 standard pages. (WHAI).
Written exam paper + poster presentation. Students are required to select a topic of their choice within the topics covered in the seminar. Maximum 9 standard pages. In addition, the preparation of a poster presentation to be given during the seminar is required. Documentation of the oral presentation and a take-home exam paper must also be submitted. The lecturer will specify whether the documentation should be a video recording of the oral presentation or the poster. An overall assessment is provided for both parts of the exam. The required documentation for the course must be specified in the course catalogue. (WHAI).
Written exam paper + oral defence. The written exam paper is a take-home assignment on a topic covered in the seminar. Maximum length is 9 standard pages for individual submissions and for groups of two it is 14 pages; for groups of three it is 19 pages, and for groups of four it is 24 pages. The individual oral defence lasts 20 minutes, including deliberation and internal co-examination. The internal examiner will only be involved in the assessment of the oral part of the examination and will not have read the exam paper. The overall assessment is based on both parts of the exam. (WHAI + ORAL).
The oral examination lasts for 30 minutes, including a 5-minute deliberation period, internal co-examination. The student draws a question and has half an hour to prepare before the examination. Another lecturer will act as a co-examiner. (ORAL).
Seminar reexamination follows the same format as the ordinary exam.
Please note that the internal co-examiner must be present for oral defences and oral exams. The role of the examiner is primarily to ensure a consistent and fair examination and assessment and to document the process by taking notes. The examiner is involved in the overall assessment of the academic level but is not expected to have specific knowledge of the course content or subject area. The seminar lecturer agrees with their colleagues on who will act as internal co-examiner.
The exam form for the bachelor seminars in the 5th semester consists of documenting one’s oral presentation. The type of documentation required, such as slides, manuscript, or video, is determined by the lecturer and specified in the course catalogue. (WHAI).
Some courses require 80% attendance as a prerequisite for exam participation. In some cases, some periods of absence can be replaced with a discussion assignment. Read more about attendance requirements.
If a course involves practical skills training and requires 80% attendance, missed attendance cannot be made up through a discussion assignment.
All lecturers must register student attendance. Qwickly Attendance is a useful tool that can be integrated into Brightspace.
Grades are awarded based on the fulfilment of the academic objectives stated in the course catalogue. It is important that the reasons provided to the student and the assessment made with the co-examiner are solely based on these academic objectives.
Grades must be submitted before the deadline published on WISEflow. If you are unable to meet the deadline due to illness or exceptional circumstances, please contact BSS Studies and the director of studies as soon as possible.
External as well as internal co-examiners are listed in Wiseflow. The lecturer contacts the co-examiner to decide on a time for the assessment.
Internal examiners must comply with best practice for external examiners (censors).
Please note that written exam papers must meet the formal requirements for the submission of written exam papers.
If an exam paper is rejected for non-compliance with the formal requirements, this is an administrative decision. The student must receive a notification from the BSS Studies Administration. As the examiner, you must send an email to dispensationsansogninger.bss@au.dk stating:
- Name of exam
- Flow number or student ID
- Reason for the rejection
You will be informed once the caseworker has notified the student. Only after the student has been notified can the assessment be entered into WISEflow.
As an institution, AU has a zero-tolerance policy towards cheating and plagiarism in exams. As an examiner, you are obliged to be aware of possible cheating. You can use Ouriginal (formerly known as Urkund), which automatically checks exam papers in WISEflow for overlap with other sources, as a tool to identify exam papers that require further investigation. Note, however, that the Ouriginal report cannot stand alone when reporting an exam paper.
Read more about exam cheating and how to report suspected cheating.
If in doubt, you are always welcome to contact the director of studies.
Please note that you can record time spent on reporting possible cheating in your timesheet ("timeregnskabet" in Danish; choose: Øvrige aktiviteter -> Andet ifm undervisning -> Eksamenssnyd).
If a student appeals against a grade, the appeal will be sent to the examiner and possibly to the co-examiner. You will be required to make a statement, typically within a fortnight (July does not count). In this statement, you must provide a justification for the grade given based on the academic objectives of the course and the Grading Scale Order. In your response, you can suggest that the appeal be rejected or that a re-assessment take place. The student will then be given the opportunity to comment on the examiners’ statement.
The director of studies will then make a decision based on the appeal, the statement and the comments. The decision may take one of the following forms:
• An offer of a re-assessment by new examiners (written exams only),
• An offer of a re-exam with new examiners, or
• The student’s appeal is not upheld.
In the context of a re-assessment, the new examiners will not receive information about the original grade. The re-assessment may result in a lower grade.
Generative AI in this context includes all text-generating systems. That is, systems that generate new text based on user input.
The use of generative AI must be transparent. The student must state which tools are used for what. There are three specific levels of use:
In any written work, the student must indicate the extent to which generative AI has been used and which systems have been used.
With regard to generative AI, there are three types of submissions/written exams:
The course catalogue must specify the type of submission required for each course involving written exams. This information must be provided when the course is registered.
In exams in which GAI is permitted, the Department of Psychology requires that the student state on the exam paper whether GAI has been used. The student must indicate both if GAI was not used and if GAI was used, and in the latter case, how GAI was used. In the Psychology programme, this is sufficient to meet AU's requirement that the use of GAI must be declared, cf. AU's rules and recommendations for using GAI.
As a supplement to this statement in the assignment, the student has the option of uploading a statement (see the statement template at the link above) with a more detailed description of the use of GAI without taking up space in the assignment. This declaration is optional and will not be included in the assessment of the assignment as it is not an academic product but an administrative record of the student's use of GAI.
Suggested wording for the use of generative AI in the assignment:
"Generative AI was not used in the design of this assignment"
"In this assignment, Bard was used for proofreading and linguistic improvement"
"In this assignment, ChatGPT was used to discuss perspectives on theory X using prompts xxx".
Students must specify the level of use of generative AI and follow these citation rules:
1. Translation and language processing. A general description of the process must be given.
2. Text suggestions that are rewritten or designed based on the output of generative AI must be cited with a source reference to the generative AI platform.
3. Text generated directly by generative AI must be cited as a quotation with a source reference to the generative AI platform.
See how to credit the use of generative AI on UC San Diego's website and Humber Polytechnic's website.
Students must never submit classified, sensitive, confidential and/or personal information to generative AI platforms. If it is clear from the examination answer that the student has done so, the answer cannot be assessed and will be rejected on the grounds of non-compliance. This has been added to the published Formalities in Written Assignments.
Failure to cite a source for generative AI, or the use of generative AI in exam forms where it is not permitted, will be considered as exam cheating. Read more: Know the rules when you have an exam
Note that students may use the AI-based tool Whisper and Transcriber to automatically transcribe interview data if they have used it via the AU-approved UCloud. Find out more about Whisper and Transcriber.
Generative AI is a relevant tool in academic psychology. During psychology training, students need to have access to the use of generative AI in an academic context and be able to critically assess the strengths and limitations of technology.
Students must be aware of the legal, academic and ethical issues in using generative AI, in the form of copyright and GDPR pitfalls, lack of transparency, and errors and biases. This needs to be included in the teaching of courses that allow the use of generative AI. In addition, students must be introduced to the need for quality control of the output of generative AI systems at an early stage in their education, and issues relating to generative AI must be included in the teaching of GDPR and ethics.
The underlying principle for the use of generative AI is transparency. Regardless of the use, students must indicate in any written assignment the extent to which generative AI has been used and which systems have been used. Students should be expected to use generative AI to generate ideas, explain theories and concepts, provide perspective on material, and gain insight into critical aspects of the theory being presented. Teaching can benefit from taking this as a starting point and including it as an active element in the preparation and processing of material.
Below are the Department of Psychology's guidelines for the use of generative AI in teaching and exams. The guidelines are valid from 01.03.2024 and will be updated as necessary in line with developments in generative AI. Updates will be published via the Teaching and Examination Portal for teaching staff and the Study Portal for students.
Generative AI in this context includes all text-generating systems. That is, systems that generate new text based on user input.
In all assignments with written content, i.e. exam assignments, papers, posters and slides for presentations, there is a requirement for transparency regarding the use of generative AI, even if the student did not use it. Therefore, a description of the use of generative AI must be included. Students are asked to describe this under the heading "Use of generative AI", preferably at the beginning of the assignment.
We generally distinguish three levels of use:
1. Translation and language processing. A general description of the process must be given.
2. Text suggestions that are rewritten or designed based on the output of generative AI must be cited with a source reference to the generative AI platform.
3. Text generated directly by generative AI must be cited as a quotation with a source reference to the generative AI platform.
See how to credit the use of generative AI on UC San Diego's website and Humber Polytechnic's website.
The Psychology programme includes assessments that do not allow the use of generative AI. This means that some written exams will exclude the use of generative AI. The rationale for this is to ensure that our students acquire skills and psychological knowledge through their studies that do not depend on access to generative AI.
There are three types of assignments and exams:
- No use of generative AI
- The use of generative AI is defined by the lecturer, e.g. requirement for an attached prompt history, or use as in points 1) and 2) above, but not 3).
- The use of generative AI is optional.
For each course with written assignments and exams, the course catalogue must specify which of the three types is valid.
Students must never submit classified, sensitive, confidential and/or personal information to generative AI platforms. If it is clear from the examination answer that the student has done so, the answer cannot be assessed and will be rejected on the grounds of non-compliance. This has been added to the published Formalities in Written Assignments.
Failure to cite a source for generative AI, or the use of generative AI in exam forms where it is not permitted, will be considered as exam cheating. Read more: Know the rules when you have an exam