Reps Meting 8/11/2017

Staff Student Rep Meeting – Wednesday 8th November 2017

In attendance:  Stuart Anderson, Director of Teaching, Neil Heatley, ISS Manager, Sarah Taylor, Communications and Recruitment Officer, Ross Armstrong, Computing Support, Kendal Reid, ITO

Note: I note we usually just record the staff in attendance – it would be better to list everyone?  What do you think?

Stuart asked the Reps if the Reps could agree amongst themselves if someone would be willing to attend the School’s Teaching Committee Meeting, this committee covers things like the day to day running of the courses and teaching and Board of Studies covers suggestions for new courses and programmes etc.

The Reps reported that they have all done their EUSA Rep training, they said that the felt the training is more focused on information but our Reps feel that our meetings are more dynamic as we have our meetings weekly unlike other schools.

Stuart suggested it might be good for the Reps to have access to post to the blog so they can maybe suggest agenda items for students to comment on, or they can just email Stuart or Kendal directly.

Stuart also mentioned that we have a Staff Student Liaison Committee meeting which is held at the end of every Semester, this will include the course reps and the course organiser for the year, this will allow the specific years to discuss any issues that could be related back the specific course lecturers.  These are likely to be held in web commencing  Monday 4th December.

Stuart has contacted the course lecturers for the issues with INF1-CL and AILP and is currently awaiting a response, also for CS he has suggested the lecturer could use the document camera for her Maths part of the course.

Regarding CSLP Stephen Gilmore has agreed to run some additional labs both for SELP and CSLP.

MLP the lecturer has apologised for the inconsistencies in the coursework published in the pdf and the Piazza forum.

IMC Ross Armstrong is going to see if he can look into the possibility of scheduling recordings.  [This should have recorded the Monday 13 Nov Lecture]

UG1
The reps have decided not to send out a class survey, as Mike Fourman has already done this and he is able to answer directly to the results.
The reps have also set up a UG1 facebook page to let the students know who they are and they are able to comment on the page with any issues or feedback they may have.

UG2
Any issues that have arisen have now been been fixed.  A student survey was sent out and the reps will put the feedback into a document and forward this on the lecturers.

UG3
CD is currently not being recorded, this could be due to the location rather than the lecturer, Ross will look into this. [Stuart has checked with the Lecturer and the lecturer does not wish mohave the lecturers recorded.]

UG4
MLP an email was sent to the students by the lecture stating he was surprised that not all the class had signed up for the Piazza page, some of the students did not think this was a mandatory part of the course and caused some confusion as they weren’t sure if all the updates were on the course web page or Piazza.  DBS only uses Piazza for any course related issues and not the course web page, so one source of information should be made clear.

EXC the students felt the marking for the coursework was harsh and didn’t give any reasonable feedback, the questions for the 2nd coursework are similar, so better feedback would have been good enabling them to correct their wrongs for coursework 2.  They asked if a marking scheme could be made available.

MSc
It was asked if the Reinforcement Learning will be running next Semester, as there is no lecturer in place, but Stuart reassured the students that this course will be running in Semester 2.

BIO1 is being taught in Room 6.06 and students have asked if the lecturer could wear a microphone, as this class has 44 students enrolled, it is too big for the smaller rooms and too small to have the full use of the lab so other students are also using room 6.06 making it hard to hear, it was requested if it was possible to reserve the front rows while it is being taught.

General
There is still no contracts being issued, but Neil told the students to submit their time sheets anyway until the contract situation is resolved.  HR who currently hold a Service of Excellence award are currently dealing with this and they have over 1000 contracts to manually enter into the system.

It has been requested that students stop eating in the labs, there has been complaints about strong smells and messy work stations, if students cannot be respectful to others then eating in the labs will be banned completely.

AT holds a weekly fire alarm test at 11am every Wednesday, if an alarm goes off any other time and for more than 15 seconds ALL students must evacuate the building at once and once vacated they must clear the entrances to allow others to evacuate.  The lifts will not be in action if an alarm goes off but you can exit the building via the main stair case and the west staircase.

Neil stated the Mulled wine and Mince Pies event will likely be held in Revision week, starting Monday 4th December.

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