The Indira Gandhi National Open University (IGNOU) has released guidelines for online internship for learners who have registered for MA Second year/ BDP-BA (Psychology) and third year, before or during January 2021.
The online internship is being provided as it would be difficult for learners of MA Psychology (MAPC) and BDP-BA Psychology to carry out regular internships due to the Covid-19 pandemic situation.
The Discipline of Psychology is providing the learners who have registered for their final year before or during January 2021 (those who have paid the fees and registered for final year by January 2021) an option to carry out Online Internship.
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This is a temporary provision due to the current COVID-19 pandemic and is not applicable for learners who have already reregistered for MA Second year/ BDP-BA (Psychology) third year during July 2021 admission cycle, or later batches.
Criteria for selection of Online Internship:
1. The online internship needs to be offered by an organisation already offering psychological services.
2. The organisation offering the online internship needs to have a proper website and brochure with the help of which the Discipline can authenticate the internship.
3. The structure of the internship needs to be as per the specialization of the learner.
4. The online internship needs to provide enough scope for activities (including case study, role plays, group discussions, psychological tests, exercises etc.) that the learner needs to carry out and the content needs to reflect the same. It should not be just theoretical information that can be learnt through other sources.
Duration of actual online sessions: The duration of actual online sessions will be a minimum of 120 hours for MA Psychology and 60 hours for BDP-BA Psychology.
The overall duration of the internship will be 240 study hours for MA Psychology and 120 hours for BDP-BA Psychology and besides the online sessions, the rest of the study hours can be covered in terms of activities (including case study, role plays, group discussions, psychological tests, exercises etc.) and report writing etc.
The organisation offering online internship needs to provide the learner with an agency supervisor who is a psychologist (refer to the criteria in the Handbook of Internship). For an online internship in MPCE015, the agency supervisor needs to be a RCI registered Clinical psychologist. The internship needs to be carried out only in one organization. For more details visit the official IGNOU website. Click here for the guidelines and details.