Introduction to Psychology: The Psychology of Learning (FutureLearn)

Understand the different ways we learn

How do we learn different behaviors? What effect does biology have on our ability to learn new things?

This course explores the psychology of learning, covering famous historical experiments and current learning theories.

You’ll investigate the difference between instinctive and learned behaviors, and the various approaches to how we learn.

Explore classical conditioning and other learning models

You’ll build on your existing knowledge of the famous Pavlov’s Dog experiment as a form of classical conditioning and further explore operant conditioning and observational learning.

Adding these additional structures allows you to consider the impact of positive and negative consequences on learning behaviors, and the extent to which we learn from watching and imitating others.

Investigate the overlap of biological psychology and learning behaviors

Expanding on your knowledge of biological psychology and developmental psychology developed on earlier courses in this ExpertTrack, you’ll have the chance to combine that knowledge with learning theories to find out how biological factors can influence some forms of learning. You’ll also interpret the influence of behaviorism on the study of learning.

This introductory course is for anyone interested in psychology – you don’t need any past experience.

It might be of particular use to learners who have already completed a Bachelor degree in other disciplines who are interested in expanding their science and research skills.