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.