Hi. My name is Robert Maxwell-Jones and I'm the program lead for the Postgraduate Certificate in Clinical Supervision here at the University of Derby Online Learning. I've decided to take a bit of time to talk through the course and what to expect as a student studying with us.
So first of all as I said my name's Robert or Rob I'm the program lead for the course and a bit about my background I'm a BACP registered psychotherapist with an MSc in Integrative Counselling and Psychotherapy and I'm currently completing the professional doctorate in Health and Social Care Practice with a focus on Psychotherapy here at the University of Derby. My areas of practice include eating disorders, body image, bereavement and anxiety and depression and my areas of research interest include muscle dysmorphia, body image, men's mental health and my current doctoral research is around linking exercises and talking therapy together.
I'd also like to introduce you to the rest of the team here at the University of Derby Online so first of all I'd like to introduce Greta. Greta is one of our associate academics and she's a researcher in psychoanalysis and psychotherapy and also an associate fellow of the Higher Education Academy. Her areas of practice and research include qualitative research, case studies, clinical diagnosis and mental health. We also have Christopher or Chris who's another associate academic, he is a registered counsellor with BACP and a psychologist and a member of the Counselling Psychology division of the BPS.
His areas of practice and research include goal working in therapy, outcome management and therapeutic process, psychology of religion and spirituality, qualitative research methods, professional issues related to counselling psychology identity and practice.
Alongside Chris and Greta there's Sharon. Another associate academic she's a BABCP accredited cognitive behavioural psychotherapist and also supervisor. She also works as a senior supervisor for a CAMHS Community Mental Health Support Trailblazer team, she's a registered mental health nurse and a CBT EMDR therapist. Her areas of practice include ACT therapy, mild moderate anxiety and mood disorders, trauma and also clinical supervision. And then we also have Wendy who is a registered BACP counsellor and her areas of practice and research includes mental health, online learning and in particular mindfulness and compassion.
So that's just a bit about the team. So now I'm going to talk a bit more about the the course, the postgraduate certificate in clinical supervision. The course is aimed at and it's really for experienced clinicians. So counsellors, psychotherapists, nurses, social workers, clinical supervisors, sign language interpreters and other types of healthcare workers. The course is really aimed at people working in the healthcare sector. This course is a unique course and uses the experience in application to become a certified supervisor, so a lot of the modules will have theoretical and academic knowledge but all of it is taught in a way that you can apply it to working life as a clinical supervisor. The work that we've had in the past from students has been really good and some has actually been presented at conferences and some students have ended up working towards academic publication based on the work that they produced during the completion of this course. So that's a really great thing to have happen for our students.
So the course is made up of 3 20 credit modules and it takes a year to complete. You'll complete one module a trimester and these modules include, or are, Skills in Supervisory Practice, Concepts and Theories within Supervisory Practice and Issues and Debates within Supervisory Practice. So that first module is really looking at the skills and sort of what skills that you'll need to develop or rely on in your supervisory role. The second module is looking more about sort of different ideas and theories around supervisory practice, supervisory models and you get to develop a supervisory concept and model for yourself that you'd like to use moving forward in your work. The third module here Issues and Debates is more to do with the issues that can come up within supervisory practice around ethics.
If there's issues that your supervisees bring that might cause discussion, so it's really looking more about the wider issues that can be brought to you as a supervisor and how best to approach them and what to do in terms of ethical issues and things like that. So all three modules are full of a lot of theoretical information but also with a high level of practical application. All our courses are quality checked by the NCS so the National Counselling Society and students in our programs are eligible for NCS membership and will be waived the initiation fee.
So often people ask what what will they be studying? So or what does it entail? So each of the 20 credit modules is made up of 10 weeks of work. Each unit will look at particular aspects of the module content, with readings, activities and formative assessment activities. There's also videos and lots of opportunity for people to interact in discussion but you'll work collaboratively using online discussions and a journal which your tutor will comment upon and give you feedback and ideas for discussion. At the end of the 10 weeks you'll complete a summative assessment which will determine your final grade for the module. The summative assessments are released very early on in the modules so you have plenty of time to look at them and often there are live sessions which focus purely on the assessment and what's expected and also gives you, the student, opportunity to ask questions if you're unsure on any element of it.
So as mentioned, these are some examples of the type of course content. So it could be videos or it can be different ways of demonstrating or displaying written writing, so we try and make it as engaging as possible and not just text after text after text but text and videos and maybe audios and also times where where we ask yourselves to interact with each other and have a good discussion about the topic or what you've been learning as well.
What's great about our course is that because we're online we attract students from all over the globe so that peer interaction is so beneficial to you because you get to not only speak to people from different maybe employment roles and different employment backgrounds but also people across the globe and get a really broad idea of what other people are doing in their roles and also be able to get a lot of different perspectives and things which can be really helpful in modules such as the Issues and Debates and also the Concepts and Skills because it's really about not just the module learning but also about that peer interaction and learning as well. We have a virtual campus rather than an actual campus that people will visit and that campus is made up of a lot of different areas including all of the facilities and support that an on-campus student would receive We like to try and form an online community which is made up of discussion boards where you would interact about learning activities or experience, thoughts and learnings and also there's areas such as Cafe Forum and Frequently Asked Question threads which allows for more informal conversation and also questions about anything that you may need support on. You have your own private email address the University email address for more personal confidential matters, if you have a question that you prefer not to put on the discussion boards, it's more than fine to get in contact with us by email. We also have Blackboard collaborate live sessions up to three times per module. These are often used for assessment support but they can also be for different topics within a module and we welcome students to suggest areas that they might want further support in. We're also available for telephone and virtual meetings if you ever need a chat or have any questions that you need to talk through, I'm always available to speak to you either on teams or on the phone.
You also have a wide support network which I mentioned before, so there's the academic support for myself and the tutors and there's also a strong element of pastoral support from the online learning advisors for non-academic advice, any queries about enrollment or finance or taking a break if you need to or anything like that. The online learning advisors are on hand to help or sign-post to the relevant department if they feel that they're not able to to answer the question fully. We also have student services such as student wellbeing, the library, the careers area and the also the Union of Students. As a student you'll also get access to Microsoft Office 365 with one terabyte of cloud storage. Because the learning is online you also have 24 7 access to the student portal and virtual learning environment and as I mentioned you have access to our online library which is a really great resource and all of the staff are very supportive and helpful.
We have an online reading list with links to online books and journals, we've got the library service including library staff if you need any support, a Library Plus search system. There are obviously a lot of live sessions and pre-recorded sessions conducted by the library team to help you make full use of the services that that can be offered so whether that's how to conduct proper searches or how to access a certain journal or anything like that and also study skills, the library team have, I've made sure that there's a lot of support in place there for all of our students and each module will have a core and recommended reading list and you also have subject librarian expertise to utilize as well. So lots of help and support there with the library. Reading materials can come in different forms so that could be books, online books, online journals, articles, websites and these are a couple of examples here of what the different reading materials may look like. At the end of the course you'll be invited to come and graduate on campus here in Derby. It's a great event and we really welcome and encourage people to come and attend if they can. It's really nice to meet people in person and to celebrate all of your success, so if you're interested in the course and would like to to apply, the next step is probably to check the website for the entry criteria and the course fees and payment plans and when the next intake is so if you go to derby.ac.uk/online you'll be able to find more information about the course, then we would welcome your application. Thank you very much for your time today and I hope you found it useful.
The online Clinical Supervision Postgraduate Certificate course video
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