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.