Minutes of Meeting on 22/03/2017

In attendance: Bjoern Franke (Director of Teaching), Paul Anderson (UG1 Course Organiser), Neil Heatley (ISS Manager), Lindsay Brown (Computing Support)

Background: For several years Schools across the University have arranged Staff-Student Liaison Meetings towards the end of each semester, giving student reps the opportunity to feed back issues to year organisers and course lecturers. Within Informatics have felt this setting wasn’t ideal since course improvements could only be considered for the next year, whereas earlier and more regular meetings could initiate more immediate action. For this reason we have started our weekly meetings with the student reps, which turn out to be effective in identifying and eliminating course delivery issues. For consultation: Since the end-of-semester staff-student liaison meetings appear to have become redundant with the introduction weekly DoT/student rep meetings, should we discontinue with them?

UG1
No issues. The ,ock exam dates are out for INF1-OP and there aren’t any complaints, just the last date of the exam is the Monday after the week of teaching ends.

UG2
No Reps in attendance – due to deadlines

UG3
No Reps in attendance – due to deadlines

UG4/5
No Reps in attendance – due to deadlines

MSc
There are a lot of coursework submissions due this week. This is unfortunate, but it is up the to the student to manage their time to enable them to submit on time. Lecturers have limited options to stagger deadlines due to the short duration of the semester. The ITO could look into creating a submission calendar for students to see when they have to submit, this could be looked into for next year.

General
Forrest Hill is now being cleaned more regularly on a daily basis, but as the toilets are cleaned my males the female toilets will now be closed off when cleaning is in process enabling the cleaners to clean the toilets properly without interruption.  The cleaners have asked that no toiletries be left in the toilets, if they are they will be thrown away.
There will also be cleaning done on a Saturday and Sunday.

The dog stroking session has only 50% slots filled, if these slots are not filled by Informatics, it will be advertised to another School allowing for all the slots to be filled.

Bjoern is in talks with Gillian Bell (ITO Manager) to discuss the options of the students collecting their returned coursework in a more confidential way.

Neil is in talks with the MSc Students regarding the design of the new Hoodies.

 

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9 Responses to Minutes of Meeting on 22/03/2017

  1. s1450710 says:

    Is there any update of Yr 3 AILP results?

  2. bfranke says:

    We had an “emergency meeting” with the Head of School and are in the process of making alternative marking arrangements to ensure that the AILP results can be released in due course.

    • s1438687 says:

      I hope it’ll be taken into consideration that the issues with AILP extended further than simply this marking issue. Could go into further detail in private if needed.

  3. James Garforth says:

    Would the coursework return confidentiality problem not be redundant if students were expected to label their work with student / exam number instead of name? This used to be standard practice.

    • bfranke says:

      Possibly – a problem that has occasionally come up is that students’ handwriting is sometimes illegible and markers can’t quite read the student/exam number. Having an additional name on the submission is a possibility to check for correctness, but also gives rise to the confidentiality issue. Gillian (ITO Manager) and I will discuss this in our next weekly meeting.

    • gwatt says:

      I can confirm that electronic Mark Return forms are provided to markers (through “webmark”) who can select different versions that have either matric or examination numbers to return the marks to the Teaching Organisation, no need for submissions to include student name.

      • bfranke says:

        I think it’s more an issue for pieces of coursework, which have been submitted as a hard copy and where markers write comments and marks on the paper, and which are then left in the pidgeon holes next to the ITO. Some course lecturers have asked students to write their student numbers *and* names on their submissions.

  4. s1406123 says:

    I am wondering if it would be possible for us to be provided with cleaning product(s) in the drill hall, such that we can regularly wipe equipment before and/or after use. I am not so averse to people eating at their computers, even though we technically aren’t supposed to, but more concerned about how clean the equipment is when I turn up to log in, unaware of who has previously been sitting there and what they were doing. Hopefully it would help maintain the general state of cleanliness in the lab.

    • nheatley says:

      Good afternoon,
      Unfortunately we can’t supply cleaning equipment for a range of reasons including the sheer volume to support such a large space would require significant amounts.
      Historically we’ve expected students to be self policing however if this is no longer working we will have to move to more fully enforce the no eating at computers rule.
      We are having issues keeping multiple areas of Forrest Hill clean and usable, I have received a variety of complaints about kitchen sinks blocked and toilets being abused.
      As we prepare to move to Appleton Tower, we need to ensure that the new ‘drill hall’ is treated in the manner in which the majority of students act, and if eating at workstations becomes unsustainable, then we will have to review the currently relaxed situation.
      Best,
      Neil

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