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.

W/B 28th November 2011

Monday I worked at home and this enabled me to catch up on lots of admin so great and start my key note presentation I am giving at a conference in Birmingham on 9^th December.

Tuesday I travelled to Sheffield Hallam for the day where I was chairing the SEDA conference committee for a meeting where we were exploring the conference abstracts for May 2012 conference and agreeing the theme for November 2012 conference and some of the key note speakers.

Wednesday I was in the University for three key meetings. The University APPSC met and I have outlined key items here.

The undergraduate APE’s have been moved to a later deadline this year to take account of NSS issues etc and will come to February school BOS meetings

There is now a UKBA Tier 4 policy in place for schools and a new member of academic services who starts on 12^th December w2ill over see this

The two thematic groups and schools are finalising plans to go through the subgroups of senate and then a tentative plan will go to ex-co and then council in January and a final plan to both in March. I am on the Education and Student Experience group which met again last week on our researchers day so I could not go but there were 25 of us who had written papers which apparently have been grouped by theme and voted on and there will be further information about next stage of voting/prioritising soon

The APPSC for the University reviewed new terms of reference for the committee and approved these and a new name which is now called the Education Committee

The Student Union updated us on an audit they had done on programme reps which are now 493 in number with an even split between UG and PG students. Most schools have good cover except SEMS but this is being sorted. The Stars conference had 94 students registered and 60 attended but some of these had to be in class. Seven members of the SU are going to the NUS annual conference including one PhD student. The new student working community group met for the first time and the SU are looking at how to take activities forward but it is clear students affiliate themselves with programmes and schools and not the University and so this is where they will start

The Key Information Set (KIS) working group will start to work ASAP I am on that for us this will probably be January now. The chair is a professor from CASS. This is for UG programmes only. The way information is collated is that it is assumed students do 120 credits per year using the most popular routes in relation to the number of students where there are electives. The timetables being used then for calculations are the 11-12 ones. The learning and teaching are then taken from the module specifications using three categories which are not negotiable and are scheduled, independent and placement.  These are then represented as a % across programmes. The average teaching hours expected across the higher education sector for scheduled teaching is 18 hours and so there was a long discussion about the hours across programmes at City. Many felt their programmes met and this for Health and SEMS the programmes probably exceeded this for UG students. There was a also a long discussion around the KIS learning and teaching definitions that have to be used for this activity which HEFEC also had produced. All this would require changes in PRISM but also for the assessment methods choices where again there was a list and programmes would have to publish the % of examinations and coursework etc. The information for KIS had to be sent to HEFEC in July 2012 and so PRISM changes needed to made ASAP using the KIS lists. All UG programmes would then need revising to ensure programme and module specifications met these requirements and were clear about the hours by March 2012.

The Learning and Teaching plan was progressing and again it was acknowledged that this was a compliance plan and not developmental but this was due to the many areas not progressed for the last year and the forth coming institutional review. The list of areas to be addressed was very long and so there was a need to prioritise what was needed this year and what could be deferred to the next year. There was a discussion about these areas and it was agreed to put on hold programme director development however the discussion around the personal tutor forum raised issues again about variability across schools and how this also impacted on NSS. It was agreed to bring back to the next meeting the previous review undertaken 18 months ago. Otherwise the lists were agreed.

There were changes to the your voice survey for years 1 and 2 this year so they reflected the NSS questions and there would be information buttons on many areas to help students understand what was being asked. This was seen as really helpful. The your voice surveys were going to run from 6^th February the same as the NSS because the plan is now to run all surveys together for students.

There was information about the institutional review with a key dates outlined and there would be further information about who would be in the main groups for this.

There was a discussion about external examiners and the number not yet in place in schools which included us with Stephanie leaving. There was mention of the new criteria making this difficult however this was not felt to be an issue and a paper would be going to ex-co related to the numbers outstanding.

Carol Vielba from CASS who had previously commented on PODS and lack of information wished the board to note how much better the PODS are since the rebuild and wanted that acknowledged for who had been involved so great news.

There was to be an assessment board review for areas such as extenuating circumstances and this work was to be done for July 2012.

There are now revised programme approval forms for stage I and stage II which are to be used from now so all academics who sign these off please be aware and take time to look at these on the website.

Programme student representatives were now also going to be on periodic review panels and there was a debate about whether this should be as a pilot or for all this year. It was agreed where appropriate all programmes and I suggested the MA Academic Practice would be good for this.

Following this meeting I went straight into the Learning development Advisory board as did all the ADE’s and we discussed and agreed the learning development projects for this year. I will letting all applicants know over the weekend and will provide more information about the projects for each school next week.

Following this we all also had the Learning Development Board of Studies. At this meeting some minor amendments for assessments on the MA were agreed, the APE for the MA 2010- 2011 and the MPhil/PhD 2010 -2011 programmes were approved. There were some other smaller items of business.

Thursday well less to report hurrah a few meetings with staff from across the University about some projects and some members of the team but otherwise a chance to catch up on the e-mails.

Friday I had a few meetings with staff again from across the University and was able to again catch up on a bit of admin.

W/B 21st November 2011

This week has been taken up with a range of meetings, external examining and the presentations on the research development day and other sessions. The academic team, Tom and Sara on Monday discussed some future proposed research on the MA Academic Practice. On Tuesday I was external examining at the Open University for the day.

Wednesday was the research development day and Professor Paul Curran opened the day and Jo Bradford provided the plenary session on the “REF”. The remainder of the day was focused on sessions about working with your supervisor effectively, preparing for your Viva, presenting at a conference, writing for academic purposes and qualitative data collection and analysis to name a few. The final session was three students presenting their experiences of being a PhD student. There is a formal evaluation of the day but anecdotally those I spoke to said they had enjoyed the day and found it useful.

Thursday Keri, Annemarie and I had budget meetings and a meeting about the move in our office with space being increased for ADU and some reduction for us. Those who are being moved round are the support and academic team and all know but bear with them at the end of next week when their computers are off for a day and they are being moved across the office. Other than that I did a session for Andy and Sian on the learning, teaching and assessment module and met with two students from the programme. On Friday I had sometime to catch up on the weeks e-mails and then did a sessions on for the LDC research and journal club on ethics and then again a brief session on the dissertation module for Patrick on ethics. I ended the week by peer reviewing a statistics class which was good and I learnt something too.

W/B 14th November 2011

Monday and Tuesday I had a range of meetings with various staff across the University.

Wednesday I attended Heads of Educational Development Group (HEDG) net work of all Heads across the UK. There was a presentation at this about student engagement and how to include them in enhancement from Bath University. This was interesting and led to a lot of discussion about how students now want to be partners in their learning. There are some really interesting projects going so Bath are running a student scheme of shadowing senior managers in the University so they understand their role too and Exeter University now have students on lecturer appointment panels and on University finance committees really interesting.

There was then a discussion around the revised UKPSF and how now there was a clear Senior Fellow and Principal Fellow route. This led to discussion about how HESA will ask in March/April of next year for institutional data on who is a qualified lecturer and who has HEA fellowship as academics etc although this will not published in 2012 but will be in 2013. Lots of places now starting to explore this we have not but I will add this to list of keeping an eye on and discuss with HR how data might be possible to collect through the academic CV if this goes into a database.

There was also a discussion about HEDG having got one of the JISC digital literacies bids and how this was to explore how Heads contributed to this in their institution. There was a debate about what this really means and several definitions are now around.

The afternoon finished with Gina Wisker feeding back on the follow up research that has been done on Educational Centres furthering David Gosling’s earlier work.

Thursday and Friday I was at the SEDA Autumn conference both presenting but also as the now co-chair of the conference committee which I took over on May 2011. You can all see some of the conference presentation notes from both Olivia and myself on the conference blog.