Freestanding undergraduate work and organizational psychology courses began in 1976 at the Department of Psychology. Umeå University, and included in due time four ordered levels for the undergraduate stage: A, B, C, and D (each corresponding to first-cycle courses of 30 ECTS credits today). The content of the lower course levels reflected traditional domain knowledge, while the higher levels often involved a specific application (with demanding guidance) to the studs profession.

Postgraduate education

Most studies from the nineties onward were part of projects of the Communication Research Unit at Umeå University. Some of Strangert's doctoral students presented their dissertations at Luleå Technical University and Linköping University. See the list in the section 'Dissertations and undergraduates theses.'

Program students taking a program' Personnel Science',

Students aimed at training in the management of human resources and work environment could choose our course alternative, Work and Organizational Psychology, as part of their Program. Because most students had little or no qualified work experience, we tried to compensate by letting them participate in our ongoing OD-projects to become experienced in fieldwork according to strict scientific and ethical principles. (Theses for  1991-2005 are at arborg.se/Themes: Dissertations and undergraduate theses in Work & Organizational Psychology.)

Distance education with a possible offline application at work.

During the nineties, we introduced three new freestanding courses with hybrid distance education: Work and Organizational Psychology  A1 (with a cognitive focus), A2 (with an organizational focus),s and Psychology of Leadership, L (with a focus on OD) for a diverse population of professionals. This student population included professionals with university eligibility, between 25 - 55 years old, often with qualified positions in various companies or public service. The central theme was using scientific principles and methods for practical problem-solving. Most learning tasks concerned possible applications for the student's work situation. Teaching on a course involved recurrent online contact between students and supervisors and two obligatory university meetings with lectures and experimentation during an academic semester.

The problem-solving tasks concerned individual, social and organizational perspectives on problems or development at work and the student's situation. The teaching paradigm was based on cognitive learning principles to handle complex tasks by training to suggest and revise solutions contingent on reflection and feedback. The picture illustrates how a training sequence was structured.

Figure 1. Learning model.

Notice that the supervisor only delivers general guidelines in response to the students' almost unavoidable failures to solve a complex problem during the first trials. The purpose is to stimulate creative thinking about how to go forward; this process repeats in several cycles before specific external feedback. Another feature of the process is that the student should invent a solution compatible with the situation at work;  that is, by adjusting the solution to function in a natural personal, social or organizational context. This invention might increase the likelihood that the student would be more realistic and self-confident regarding a possible initiative to implement changes at work. One should discuss questions of application with an experienced support person who has close connections to different domains of working life.

We also used a similar learning model in the late stages for the students of the Program in 'Personal science,' including an advanced course in scientific methods and an undergraduate thesis.

Some study statistics about the distance courses

Our courses with distance education for professionals were the most comprehensive at the time in Sweden, with many applicants from the whole country. In spring 2005 (the last term for two courses), course A2 was top-ranked among all courses at Umeå University: ranked 1 with 259 first choice applicants (of 304 in total); course L  was ranked second with 184 first choice applicants (of 266 in full)

Initially, all applicants got an invitation to participate in an informal propedeutic introduction to appreciate the high course requirements and study efforts. We distributed examples of challenging study tasks, methods, and literature excerpts by mail for three weeks. Later, at the official start and after an oral demonstration of course goals and content, about 40-60 motivated students remained and registered with presumably realistic study expectations and high study capabilities. These preconditions enabled us to use advanced course literature and intriguing practice tasks. The student completion rates were high in all three courses.

All students were obliged to anonymously answer a course evaluation form with 58 questions administered by a clerk outside the teaching team. The table shows some illustrative student ratings in 2003 on the distance education courses A2 and L, which

are relevant for the learning model in Figure 1.

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There are no general objective results about the practical utility of the scientific training for the course participants. (Unfortunately, a state of validation deficit seems to apply to most university courses of social science!) But many comments from former participants confirmed positive images of the learning approach. The most appropriate evaluation criteria of course validity came from collaborating with the students in real-life contexts. Such experiences ought to be a necessary qualification for any social science teacher. 

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¹ Data were collected at an evaluation in 2003 by the former Swedish National Agency for Higher Education. 

Education in The Psychology of Leadership in Development Projects

Eligible participants in the contracted OD-projects were generally offered training and examination in our university course Psychology of Leadership L.