Staff Student Rep Meeting – Wednesday 14th February 2024
n attendance: David Sterratt Deputy Director of Teaching, James Garforth UG1 Year Organiser, Adam Lopez UG4 Year Organiser, Dimitrios Rakovitis Senior Computing Support Officer, Rory Haddow Senior Computing Support Officer, Stephen McBurney Student Adviser, Meredith Corey Learn Technologist, Kendal Reid ITO
UG1
The INF1B course page is disorganised, it is difficult to find information. Coursework 2 Part 1 is due 15th February and according to the Reps 150 students missed the submission, even though it is formative, if you don’t submit then you *don’t* receive tutor feedback.
There is no guidance on the worksheet and the reading is far too much, the instructions are also very long and have too much explanation and it is also not well guiding by the tutors! Tutorials are downloaded to zip file pages which as an FAQ which doesn’t help. There is also talk about exceptional grades but the students feel lost by this! David has suggested that the Reps take all this to the Course Organiser. David explained that UG1 is still under review for next year.
UG2
There are less emails from the SEPP Course Organiser this week.
Two tutors one for INF2-IADS and one for INF2D did not turn up last week. David explained that they should really put a message out to the group, or on Piazza and let the Course Organiser know if they know they are going to be absent from their group and attend another group in their absence for that week.
Applications are out for applying for Internships but it is unclear as to who to ask for a reference, previously it would have been a Personal Tutor who the students got to know personally but now they have been replaced by Student Advisers and the Student Advisers don’t feel qualified to do this!
*Action David and Neil to talk to Sophie*
UG3
No Reps in Attendance.
UG4
ACP tutorials being online and risk of unstable internet connection to online lectures.
*Action David has sent to this on Bjoern Franke*
NLU+ piazza not being routinely monitored.
*Action David has contacted the Course organiser*
MSc
No Reps in attendance.
General
There was a discussion about employing UG students as tutors. Reps felt some were excellent, but others lacked training in how to teach and/or were not expert enough in the subject. The opportunity to get experience as tutors is an attraction for some students.
The reps asked what the criteria are for selecting students as tutors, and when and where is there training? Currently training for all tutors is online, at the start of Semester 1, though some courses do extra training. Course organisers are responsible for selecting tutors, and will tend to select students with high grades.
We discussed ways of improving tutor training, for example having in-person training, possibly at the end of Semester 2, to give more training time. However, this would probably require even faster timelines for employing tutors and demonstrators than we already have, and training would still be needed in Week 0. Another idea was to embed a short course on How to Learn to Teach, which could be part of the first year curriculum.
Action: Meredith Corey to review the tutor training materials and David Sterratt to escalate the suggestions to the Director of Teaching.
AT Bike Store the locks are broken.
*Action Stephen*
The University System Resource Booker is slow and takes a long time to load. David explained that there is a new Time Tabling System being developed for next year which will be an improvement.
If a student needs to contact their tutor on a course, they can’t find their names, some courses have the tutors named on the Learn pages and some don’t!
The main doors at the basement entrance sometimes work and sometimes don’t, along with one lift being out of action! The ITO have asked from an update from Estates.