Update W/B 16th April 2012

Learning Advisory Board

Last week there was the Learning Advisory Board and the LDC vision was discussed. The members of the Board were very supportive of us having a new vision and making this a clear document about us leading Academic Excellence in the Institution and leading/evaluating policy development. There was also discussion about how we need to focus on more research in the institution. They have suggested some useful revisions to the strategy including linking more closely to the education part of the strategic plan and quoting this in our strategy. The next draft will be ready for teams to discuss at the beginning of May.

There will be one last meeting in the summer of the LD advisory board focused mainly of reviewing the award scheme for next year.

Board of Studies

The last meeting of the year took place and the main business included approving our Periodic review document for the MA Academic Practice programme which takes place on 10^th May and the Nursing and Midwifery Council Approval which takes place on 29^th May.

David Bolton

David is coming to an extra team meeting on 2^nd May 11.30 – 12.30 so we can discuss the education component of the strategy with him and future plans.

Education Component of the Strategic Plan

Now the plan is finalised work on the learning and teaching strategy will begin and there is an away day for members of the Education Committee on Friday 25^th May which Pam is attending. The purpose of the day is to discuss the development of the plan key aspects of this and deadlines.

QAA Institutional Review

I have sent round our first chance to be involved in the development of self evaluation document. This shows the key areas of the document and section 4 is particularly relevant to us. To help Academic Services with the draft of this document we need to provide any activities we are doing for these areas, any evidence we have so website, moodle etc and any plans we have for future. If people could send me what they can by Friday for the first draft this would help. I will collate one document and save this on shared drive for us all. The QAA undertake a first visit 4 – 6^th September and then again for the week of 15^th – 19^th October. Annemarie and I will be meeting with Academic Services to keep briefed about this and will provide information to the team as we get this.

March Blog update

Assessment Group 2^nd meeting

This group met for the second time. As noted before, this group has been set up for a short period of time to review the policies for extenuating circumstances and appeals. This meeting looked at issues around whether there could be distinctions around minor and major circumstances and therefore the impact on students. Some Schools are using these. However following much discussion there was concern around equality related to this and how impact of circumstances will vary for students. There is to be further discussion at the next meeting.

Senate Meeting 7^th March

There were two main items that took most of the time and are of interest to us the proposed graduate school and the next steps of the strategic plan for 2012-2016.

GRADUATE SCHOOL this had been originally proposed via e-mail and had met with some resistance in terms of the proposal but also the mode of consultation. This proposal has since been to a range of groups and committees and the paper was now very different. There continued to be quite a lot of discussion around this being for PhD students only and not other postgraduates and the issue of being virtual with a limited budget. The school is however important for the REF and will enable better co-ordination of student development and training.  Some further work is going to be done but it is hoped that this will be approved at Council on 26^th March.

STRATEGIC PLAN 2012-2016 there has been some work on the next stage of the vision and this includes an area on education, knowledge transfer and estates. The developments include some high level objectives and comments were made at Senate. Following this further amendments were made and this again is waiting for approval at council on 26^th March. Once this is approved there will be work on the learning and teaching strategy and we will be involved so as soon as I have information about this I will let you know.

W/B 12^th March 2012

Heads of Education Development Group (HEDG) 16^th March

This group meets once a month to discuss issues common across Universities. There was a presentation from Exeter about how they have created a framework for experienced staff to meet standards of the Higher Education Academy Framework so they could gain associate fellowship, fellowship, senior and principle fellowship. This provided an option for those who do not do a teaching programme and for those who want to gain senior and principle fellowships not covered by a teaching programme.  The process starts with a workshop about the framework and then those interested complete an application and gain their manager support. Some support workshops are provided and then the assessment for each stage offers an option. All applicants for each stage submit a mapping against the appropriate standard and two references one of which must be internal and then they can choose whether to do 4 × 500 word case studies demonstrating how they practice at the level or a 20 minute presentation to a panel and 10 minutes Q & A. The panel reviews all submissions and discusses recommendations. The panel has senior staff from each faculty as well as from their development centre. All staff receive written feedback whether successful or not.

The benefits of the scheme have been identifying great practice and those who could do applications for the national teaching fellows scheme, the wide range of staff involved in the scheme and assessing and the managers support.  This is something we might wish to consider developing in the future.

There was brief session on “what’s on top” this enables sharing of things that are an issues at present so issues raised were:

• Increasing student engagement in a range of activities
• Increased trade union interest in learning and teaching activity and areas like module evaluations and teaching awards and how decisions are made
• An increase in student complaints about teaching quality, personal tutoring and assessment and supervision issues
• Many institutions undergoing wholesale curriculum redesign but focused on credit framework changes
• Student employability

Some of these issues are beginning to raise themselves at City so student complaints and increasing student engagement.

The reward and recognition, future development and research by the HEA was discussed by Caroline Stainton. She provided an up date on a range of areas. The HEA are about to undertake a review of the NTFS there may be changes for 2013. There is to be a greater focus on student led awards and there is already information on the website about some research.

Finally HEDG have one of the JISC digital literacy projects and the project officer provided an up date but this was going well.

KIS (Key Information Set) for Undergraduate programme 21^st March

These meetings are to discuss the information that will posted on websites for all UG programmes from September 2012 and this is compulsory for all Universities from HEFEC and will enable students and others to compare programmes much more easily. The format is prescribed by HEFEC and the areas that will be shown but this included teaching hours, assessments types, salary that can expected as a new graduate and NSS scores to name a few. On 29^th March the final guidance will be published so more information after this time.

W/B 13th February and 20th February 2012

Programme and Module Specification Update

I attended a meeting on Monday and then this was discussed again in the Associate Dean Forum. The Programme and module specification information is being taken from the PRISM documents and pasted into the word documents so they are ready to be amended. This should be completed by the end of February. The programme leaders then have to get the documents amended for U/G this needs to be by Easter and the core modules will be done first. The P/G ones need doing too after this date. The academics on the school liaison teams should be helping in the schools with this through workshops/ working with teams or individuals.

Senior Tutors for Research meeting

I attended this meeting where there was a focus on the graduate school. The VC came to the meeting to discuss this proposal which had been circulated to Senate previously. This proposal is for a virtual graduate school for research students. Some of the reasons for this include having a place to provide a sense of community and to have one place where development support can be co-ordinated. There was also discussion about whether there would be funding for students to go to conferences but funding for students remained in schools. The forum will send some comments about this proposal which is to go back to Senate.

Associate Deans for Education Forum

David was chairing this meeting and the main item was focused on a draft of the new education strategy. There was some discussion about this and the language within it and some minor changes. This was to be taken to the Education committee next and could not be shared at present. Other items that came up were the timing of the programme and module specifications again. Institutional review was also discussed and some of the areas where there were concerns at present related to information that was published.

Assessment Group

This is a group that has been set up for four meetings only to review extenuating circumstances and appeals. There will be some papers drafted to then have revisions to these policies approved through Senate.

Education Committee

This is the committee that replaced APPSC.

Student Union Report

The elections for SU officers had again begun and will be closing in two weeks with voting on 19^th March. The NUS had called for action to take place WB 12^th March related to cuts etc but our SU will not take part in the walk out on 14^th March but will take part in other actions. The SU have received several complaints lately about assessment turnaround following examinations in January and this will impact on the survey results. The SU president Rob asked that all schools urgently address this. There was a discussion about students’ expectations but also about what was being communicated to students. It was agreed that schools should e-mail students where this is an issue and cc the SU.  Last item from SU was related to them going around the sites to meet with groups of students.

Strategic Component of Vision document related to Education

There was a discussion about the continued development of the University Vision and where this was at present. Schools were currently completing their vision to go with this and there has been some work on an education component and research and knowledge transfer. The education component was discussed and there w ere some suggestions to add/amend some parts of this. This document at present is not public but will be shared once the Vice Chancellor has agreed and it is will be discussed at Senate on 7^th March.

Programme and Module Specifications

There was an update on changes and developments with programme and module specifications. PRISM is not to be used now from Monday 27^th for any amendments or updates only the word versions of documents that will made available this week.

The plan is that all UG programme specs are amended first then core and elective modules and then PG will take place too. The academic staff on each school liaison team will be helping in schools with these changes and should hopefully be involved in checking the quality of these but this needs discussing in each school with ADE. There will be approval in each school of revised specifications through some BOS mechanism and there will be an institutional approval check that I am involved in and we will be sampling documents from each school. There is yet to be confirmation of where the final documents will be held.

Student satisfaction

At present all surveys are running but response rates are currently low so students need to be encouraged to do this. The module evaluation response rates are now improving and are over 50% for most the spring evaluations will be done 26^th March.

QAA Institutional Review

There was an update on this and the pre meeting is in June and the visit is in October. Carol Vielba will be the lead academic for this for the institution. Carol is seeing all ADE’s/ Deans and HODS of services.

Annual Programme Evaluations

There was report on the 2010-2011 reports and a range of areas were noted but very positive comments about moodle and using technology to enhance learning and help from LDC so well done especially BLT team.

W/B 6th February 2012

The Education and Students Experience group met for the first time since before christmas but to provide an update. Professor David Bolton presented to council last week an overall plan of where we would like to be in the future and used case studies of other Universities who have been in our position over the last few years, these were Leicester, Queen Mary and York.

There was discussion about the investment in Professors as part of this plan through the phase 1 appointments. The plan at present provides investment for areas such as Research, Presmises, IS and Library. Education is not listed separately but is within many of these areas we were told.

It is intended to use KPI's to monitor the plan and these would be from world rankings, good university guide, financial position and environmental performance.

There has to be a final plan to council for 26th March so this has to be ready by the middle of february and this will be circulated to members to see.  Money will then be allocated in March to take forward different projects.

W/B 16th January 2012

It seems like a long time since I updated this with Christmas and early january being quiet so apologies.

Learning Development Projects

Prior to Christmas the learning advisory group met to agree this year’s Learning Development Projects. This year these projects will run slightly differently with each school still having a project led by an academic but they will run as research projects and the funds will pay for students to undertake the research.

Here are the projects that have been agreed for this year

Project Leads	School	Focus of project
Ana Gaio	Arts Cultural Policy	Alternative forms of assessment
Ann Brown	Cass Business School	Assessment and Feedback approaches
Chris Smart	Informatics	Improving communication
Claire De Than	Law	Differences between internal and external student evaluations
Stephen Abbott	SHS	Students’ perceptions of assessment methods
Arti Agrawal	SEMS	Effective assessment
Stian Reimers and Elliot Freeman	Psychology Social Sciences	Expectation and reality in students’ satisfaction with assessment and feedback

It was agreed that many of these would be valuable projects and LDC was planning to use the final reports to draw together some across University information. We discussed dissemination of the projects and the showcase on 1^st February would be too early for these projects however the conference theme for June for the Learning at City conference is assessment and feedback and most of these could provide a paper at this with students presenting in the team. There was also a requirement for the projects final report to be written up so they could be published in the learning at city journal.

Student recruitment

Schools have been encouraged to recruit students themselves but we will do this if they do not have students and Keri is leading on this.

Budget

Each project has £6000 except SHS who has £8000 and CASS acknowledging the size of the schools. The money is to be used as follows: £1000 honorarium which is taxed to be awarded to staff after the dissemination at the conference and in the journal. There is £1000 for resources such as equipment, transcribing, going to an external conference etc which leaves £4000 for students to be employed. We would be paying students through their time sheets and they could do 35 hours per month projects should finish in July. This means schools can recruit more than one student to work on the project.

Funding is dependent upon the project holders achieving each stage of the project. If at critical points no progress has been made then funding to continue the project will not be provided beyond this point.

Deadlines and next Steps

January-February: scoping, research design

It is hoped the students will be in place for this time and the teams can then provide an outline of their projects in more detail ensuring the following is covered:

·Research question(s)

·Theoretical drivers/framework underpinning the project

·Methodology

·Clear outcomes

·Dissemination and possible applicability beyond your school

·Check on whether ethical approval needed for your project

Monday 27^th February 2012

Critical point here is to submit a project report which will be reviewed by Monday 5^th March to decide if the project funding will continue. The report should include the project outline including the full project team names including the students, the scoping and research design

March-June: implementation and dissemination to date

·Undertake the project collecting data and analysing data

·Prepare abstract and if accepted present at Learning at City Conference 13^th June

Monday 21^st May 2012

Critical point here is to submit a draft final report summarising the project to date with any findings or outcomes and highlighting the conference presentation to be given at the Learning at City conference. The report will be reviewed by Monday 28^th May to provide any feedback

July: evaluation, dissemination, planning phase 2

·Evaluation of your project

·Write the final report for publication in the Learning at City Journal

·Propose a stage 2 project if you believe there is scope to transfer this beyond your school

Monday 6^th August 2012

Critical point here is to submit a final report in a format for the learning at City Journal. The honorarium is dependent upon this.

We had not allocated mentors but I will talk to people over the next week to allocate these.

Monday 16^th January 2012

Today I attended the first Key Information Set (KIS) meeting. KIS data has to be produced for all undergraduate programmes running from September 2012. This is a HEFEC initiative and not optional. The groups role is to oversee this development and the group has membership from marketing, strategy and governance, IS, Academic Services, one ADE rep, Student Union and us.

In order to develop the KIS revisions will be needed to programme and module specifications. The sorts of data that is produced is focused on contact hours, fees, assessments, careers etc. The significant changes are that HEFEC have provided a set list of teaching and learning approaches that will be used by all and assessment methods. We cannot change these. In order for this work to be done all programme and module specifications will need revising and further information about this will be available by the end of February so once confirmed I will let you all know. These will all need checking and signing off in schools and then all post graduate programme and module specifications will also need revising ready to have all these on the web.

Tuesday 17^th January 2012

In the afternoon Annemarie, Olivia, Neal and I as mentors met with the Learning Development Associates (LDA) to discuss their progress since appointment in October and to discuss their future plans. Each LDA this year is focused on one of the SLE themes and whilst starting their work in their school they are expected to also consider how whatever they have focused on will transfer to other areas of the university. Here is an outline of what was discussed for each of the LDA’s and their role.

Lorna Saunder – Communication and Collaboration

Lorna has chosen to focus on school communication difficulties with staff off site but this also has relevance to visiting lecturers. Lorna decided to set up a module in moodle for communication. She did explore other platforms such as my city but this was felt to be more appropriate at present. The moodle space was to enable sharing of information and this could be in video, postings and discussion boards. Lorna has found however that staff have been reluctant to use this although the number of staff who have been lurking has increased. Lorna has also trialled audio of team meetings but there were issues with this so this has stopped. There is going to be a twitter feed for this and guides to what to post here. Lorna plans to continue with exploring good practice and barriers and look at what other modes could be used. Olivia is Lorna’s mentor for the project and meets her regularly for this.

Chris Wiley – Assessment and Feedback

Chris has been undertaking arrange of activities exploring what is already available on assessment and feedback but also exploring aspects such as the NSS etc to see what needs to be focused on. Chris has been considering undertaking a project particularly focused on feedback and criteria and is in contact with the student Union who also have an interest in this area. Chris has been exploring what is available elsewhere as well and what conferences are examining. Chris is being mentored by Neal.

Angela Dove – Learning Environments and Curriculum Development

Angela has two posts and so is trying to balance how she manages this. In terms of learning environments she undertook some activities with Rae for the pilot learning spaces which are now available and has posted a vignette on this activity. Angela is considering how this work can be extended throughout City so others exploring their learning spaces. Angela for this aspect of her role is mentored by Annemarie.

Angela’s curriculum role has led her into looking at Cass for examples of good practice in curriculum which can be posted on the Vignettes blog but also exploring the module she was involved in developing last year which is management practice and skills re-design which is part of one of the U/G programmes. Angela is currently looking at why they re-designed and what was different. A case study is being written for JISC about this. I mentor Angela for this part of her role.

All the LDA’s have been asked to publish regular case studies for their role on the vignettes blog. I also have some funding for them to attend small conferences. We will all meet again in April once a date is agreed.

Anise Update

Many of you saw Anise when she was in the office which was great.  Anise will be having her last chemo on 13^th February and will have 5 weeks of radiotherapy. Although Anise will then continue to have some treatment until Christmas she hopes to return to work in May. Anise will however pop when to catch up with people prior to then as and when she is able.

W/B 12th December 2011

Monday the second writing for publication all day workshop ran that I developed with others for staff and PhD students. There were 25 people who attended and there is a follow up workshop in February for those who wish to continue to meet to peer review work that will go for publication.

Tuesday Tim Hudson and I ran the first external examiner workshop of this academic year. The workshop aims to introduce new external examiners to the University, its schools and the assessment regulations and polices. This was attended by 30 examiners. Following this I attended some of the economics periodic review day that Patrick had also attended in the morning.

Wednesday afternoon I attended some of Senate. I was unable to attend this all due to the timing changing and not receiving this information and having booked another meeting. However here’s some highlights of the bits I was there for and when I get the notes from the remainder I will share information from this.

• Senate approved the restructure of the school of health sciences into six divisions those of: Health services, research and management, adult years, early years, language and communication science, biological, diagnostic & therapeutic sciences and optometry and visual science.
• There was an update on items such as the advertisement of 25 chairs for phase 1 of the strategic plan, reference to the two theme groups who have met to look at priorities for the future so education and student experience and research and enterprise, there was discussion about schools currently doing their planning to feed into the strategic plan that was being reported to council at the end of January in terms of key areas and then finalised in the plan for discussion at Senate in March and then Council in March.
• The student union reported on a range of activities including the STARS conference which had NUS and QAA representation at it and the student union had approved a new constitution which commenced from 1^st November and this enabled them to seek charity status with the commission in the future, lastly they reported a rise in the number of complaints and appeals related to the quality of teaching. This raised some discussion about whether it was the actual quality of teaching or the student experience but it was felt that issues related to both. The student union also reported on the status of the programme representatives for programmes. Issues for LDC mean we need to find out some of the issues from the SU so I will arrange to meet Amish SU president education
• There was a discussion around the paper on student satisfaction post NSS 2011 and David Bolton and Susannah Marsden had been around to all UG programme directors and Deans to discuss scores and what to see what themes might be common as well as action schools were taking. Themes that were arising from this were five and included: 1) Leadership, management and culture and there were discussions around programme directors not always being in a position to impact on issues, the impact of coursework turnaround and the perception of research being more important that teaching, 2) Action planning and Implementation generally it was felt that APE’s were written and action plans developed and then these were not monitored by programme teams We need to ensure we monitor both the MA and MPhil/PhD action plans for LDC so this needs adding to PMT agendas, 3) Teaching and Learning Quality there was reference here to some staff feeling where there are teaching issues these were not dealt with which led to a discussion around the module evaluations and scores and that CASS ADE learning and teaching had seen all staff with a score of below 3.5 and looked at a plan with them. There was also discussion here about the quality of feedback still on assessments and not all modules having assessment criteria which it was agreed should not be the case now. LDC action for school liaison to pick up on these issues where raised at Learning and Teaching Committees and work with those who need support. 4) Support needs which very much focused on how schools had lost administration support around programmes and this needed to be developed and managed but also some positive work around subject librarians. 5) Sense of Belonging and direction this was also a mixture of issues around student communities and communication, student employment anxiety where for example in NHS posts had been reduced and issues around academic year and examination timetable. This all led to discussion of these issues but the over riding message from the VC was that students must not be let down by their experience with us. There was also feedback from the SU that often students felt they knew their lecturers more and felt a sense of belonging when they knew who was presenting at conferences and what they were doing. LDC could be doing more to let staff know our expertise and work by including in our blog key conferences we have spoken at or publications in journal we have had.
• The student union also reported on the first meeting of the student community working group which I am on now and the range of issues that arose related to students’ sense of belonging. Linked to this the students also reported on attendance on all school student experience committees which we do not have and perhaps need to think about how we might manage this with our SSLC. Themes that had arisen in meetings were organisation of programmes, infrastructure and community and good practice highlighted was SASS sending out pre meeting e-mails/sheets to students for items for meetings LDC could do this across appropriate modules for each SSLC
• There was a set of minutes from each BOS of studies of Schools and ours were included. The Vice Chancellor raised concerns that many minutes did not include much detail about issues that at present were key to programmes and student concerns and why decisions in some cases were made. He raised the issue of the institutional audit and how useful did members of senate belief these minutes would be. CASS were commended on theirs and ours were said to be more informative than some however following discussion of these it was agreed all current minutes would be returned to schools for additional development and then brought back to the march meeting for approval as well as minutes from further meetings. There was also a discussion of items that should be discussed at each meeting from Senate and it was noted that all BOS had received this information. Implication for LDC PP and KL to review September and now November BOS minutes to ensure these are informative and provide clear content of discussion and agreements.

I had to leave following this item for another meeting.

W/B 5th December 2011

Monday meeting with staff and then I was off site at the SEDA Executive meeting in my role as chair of the conference committee but also elected member of the executive. There was a range of business discussed from the various committees as well as work being undertaken with other agencies. Mike and Liz from the executive have been meeting with Universities UK and looking at how this organisation might wish to make further links with SEDA. I am going to liaise with the HEA who have approached SEDA about running a joint event on Open Educational Resources following some projects. QAA had met with Julie the chair about the new QAA code on learning and teaching and they want SEDA involved in drafting this. There had been a proposal from QAA to speak at the May 2012 conference in Chester and at the meeting last week the conference committee had chosen to allocate this to a slot in early evening as an additional event that participants might go to so there was a greater opportunity for attendance. Lastly David Willets is keen to work with SEDA on advancing the excellence of teaching and has offered to undertake a key note at a conference or speak at a one day event and so I am going to contact his office this week.

Tuesday various meetings but Annemarie and I met with Susan Kay who is the Director of Strategy of Planning. This really was informal to meet her and give her a chance to find out what we do and provide any additional information for us. Susan is a key member of the education and staff experience group I am on and the group currently looking at key areas for strategic development. At the last meeting I said a range of papers had been submitted to the group and these were then grouped into themes which Susan says will change little. The themes at present are:

• Creating a sense of Community – which relates to students sense of community and things such as the student portal, whether we need a graduate school and interdisciplinarity
• Creating world class academic support – which relates to library, infrastructure and professional development for lecturers in terms of teaching but also how research can inform teaching
• Creating a physical presence that matches our academic aspirations this again focused on library, spaces for students and the University’s location within the area
• Creating impactful partnership and networks for mutual strategic benefit which focused on having a clear purpose and goals for any partnerships but also on extending relationships with other London institutions to extend services such as library
• Creating efficient, supportive and business-like operating structures which again focused on information, infrastructure timetabling etc
• Creating efficient, supportive and business-like operating structures – this focused on delivery of our programmes, space, distinctiveness of graduates and positive relationships between research and enterprise

When I have further information about any changes to these I will post these.

Wednesday I was a member of the stage I panel for four proposals which were for CASS a current shared MSC programme on Finance is to divide into Finance and corporate finance, and then three programmes for SHS. The first was the PG Dip/BSc undergraduate nursing programmes for Adult, child and mental health, a proposal for an MSC Health Service Research/MRes and lastly an MSc Health Policy. All programmes were approved and so Neal and Sian will be involved in the next stages of these for their schools.

Friday I attended a one day workshop in Birmingham for the Universities and Colleges Information Systems Association. The workshop was “what price your service?” and the morning was focused on how you might cost a service and the afternoon was focused on how to evaluate and explore impact. I had been invited to a key note on evaluation and impact. There were a range of speakers and some of the sessions were very interesting. The day was attended by 75 people from across the sector mostly from IT services.