For anyone studying VCE Psychology, if you want to do well in the subject, you're going to have to work hard, revise, and do everything you can in your power to get the best possible results in your assessments and exam.
Obviously, this is easier said than done, but don't panic. There are lots of different ways to prepare and since every student is different, you must take several options into consideration before deciding on which approach is best for you and how you like to study.
Here, we're going to look at some of the best resources for VCE Psychology students as well as the different ways you can study and prepare for exams.
VCAA
Before you start looking for any other resources, go directly to the source. The Victorian Curriculum and Assessment Authority (VCAA) has plenty of information and resources for students on their website.
While a lot of these resources are aimed at teachers, there are a few resources in particular that students will find particularly useful.
VCE Psychology Study Design
The VCE Psychology Study Design is a hefty document that pretty much outlines the entire VCE Psychology course including the units, assessments, and exams. While you don't have to read this 60-page document cover to cover in one sitting, you should read it in full, paying more attention to certain sections than others.
The sections on key knowledge and the individual units will be particularly useful to students as they explain which topics students are expected to know and what they need to know about them, which can guide you when revising each topic.
It's also important that you read the study design because there's a new one for 2023-2027 so older versions of the study design are no longer valid. Naturally, they haven't completely changed everything, but you don't want to read an outdated version of it as it won't be very useful.
VCE Past Papers
You can also find past papers on the VCAA website but remember that the study design is changing this year so always check which parts of the past papers will still be relevant.
As we'll look at later, past papers are an incredibly valuable resource for practising exam technique, seeing the types of questions you should expect in your exam, and getting into the habit of sitting exams under exam conditions.
Just make sure you take the new study design into account before using any past papers from before 2023. At the time of writing, there aren't any new sample questions on the website, but the VCAA has stated that they will be published this year so that you have something up-to-date to work from, too.
A+ VCE Psychology Study Notes
While there are plenty of resources online and we'll get to a few more of them very shortly, we have to mention this highly-recommended old-school solution, a printed study guide.
The A+ VCE Psychology Study Notes book is aligned with the 2023 VCE Psychology study design and covers both units 3 and 4 and their areas of study.
The book was written by an expert teacher, Peter Milesi, and covers the exam and the various areas of study in the aforementioned units. You can buy a paperback version of the book for around $35 from most good booksellers both offline and online.
Since buying several different study guides would quickly add up, we recommend that if you only buy one, make it this one.
ATAR Notes
ATAR Notes, if you're not familiar, is a website for students across Australia. It's free to sign up and from there, you can gain access to plenty of revision lectures, tutorial classes, downloadable notes, videos, and books.
The notes are uploaded by other students so you must always check the quality of them before you use them and make sure that they align with the latest study design for VCE Psychology.
There's also content provided by ATAR Notes and everything is clearly labelled on the website making it really easy to find VCE Psychology content and resources.
This is definitely a website that you should save to your bookmarks.
Brainscape
Brainscape is a website that focuses on using flashcards and spaced repetition to learn concepts and ideas and there's a whole section dedicated to VCE Psychology.
If you're not familiar with spaced repetition, it's basically a process whereby you study new, complex, or unknown concepts more frequently than simpler or familiar concepts. The less you know about something, the more frequently you'll go back to studying it.
While it's still worthwhile going back over the things you do know, you don't have to do it as often because you're pretty familiar with it.
The Brainscape website has plenty of flashcards that you can use to study using spaced repetition and if this is an approach that you find particularly effective, then Brainscape is a website you should visit fairly often.
Revise Online
We don't mean just “revise online”, though you can certainly do that. Instead, we're talking about Revise Online, a premium online revision service, with “premium” just meaning “you have to pay for it”.
At $44 per course, it works out at a similar price to buying a study guide for each VCE subject but without the option to look for cheaper second-hand versions of the books.
However, with the new study design for VCE Psychology starting in 2023, you don't really have the option to buy second-hand study guides so this is one of the subjects where this price is comparable to them.
The $44 subscription to Revise Online includes exam revision material, topic tests, exam builders, full exams as well as marking keys and examples of the best possible answers.
If you've gone as far as you can with the free resources available online or are looking for something more comprehensive, Revise Online could be a viable option.
Study.com
As the name suggests, Study.com is a website for learning. The site's focus is shorter 5-minute lessons with animated videos to make learning more engaging for students.
For students preparing for the VCE Psychology exam, the VCE Psychology: Exam Prep & Study Guide is a resource that's of particular interest with 205 lessons averaging 8 minutes each.
There are a total of 23 chapters with quizzes to test your knowledge of each lesson and a practice test at the end of each chapter.
Much like Revise Online, Study.com is a subscription service starting at $29.99 (USD) a month, but there's also a 30-day free trial that's worth giving a go if you think this is something that you'd be interested in paying for.
What Skills Do You Need for VCE Psychology?
The important thing about all these resources is that you use them to develop the skills required of you for the VCE Psychology assessments and exams.
According to VCAA, these skills include practical experimentation and research, analytical skills including critical and creative thinking, and communication skills.
That's all well and good, but in practice, this is where the VCE Psychology Study Design comes into play. VCE Psychology aims to teach and test students on both transferable science skills and what the VCAA dubs “employability skills”, which are the kinds of skills that modern employers are regularly looking for.
You don't need to worry too much about these as you should instead be focusing on the "key knowledge" outlined for each unit. If you study and learn these, you'll be naturally learning the other skills that are part of the subject.
How to Prepare for Your VCE Psychology Exam
Preparing for any exam starts from your very first lesson in any subject. You want to be organised and test your knowledge after every lesson.
It can be really useful to get into the habit of dedicating time to studying VCE Psychology even before you start revising. By having a regular schedule for going back over lessons or revising for your exam, it'll feel like less of a chore once you really have to start sitting down and studying as your exam approaches.
Using the resources we've mentioned plus techniques like spaced repetition, you can ensure that you know all the required key knowledge, topics, and concepts outlined in the study design.
Studying for your VCE Psychology Exam is much easier if you've kept on top of everything since you started studying psychology, but don't forget that you can always get help with psychology or any other subject from private tutors.
A private VCE Psychology tutor, for example, can help you find which resources work best for you, the most effective learning approaches, and a revision or study plan that you can easily follow to get the best results on your exam!
Psychology is sometimes wrongly referred to as an easy subject, but you can make it easier with good resources.
Enjoyed this article? Leave a rating!
Loading...
