Staff Student Rep Meeting – Wednesday 4th March 2020

In attendance: Stuart Anderson Director of Teaching, Neil Heatley Head of Student Services, Karen Davidson Student Support Officer, Mohammed Javaid Computing Support Officer, Kendal Reid ITO

Stuart started the meeting off by asking what Teaching has been affected through the years, and let him know, as the School has no way of knowing in advance of what is and isn’t affected, as staff on Strike are not obliged to inform the School. [A form will be circulated shortly.]

 

UG1

INF1-OP is running well and there are no concerns, the students are busy working on coursework 2.

Stuart has spoken with Information Services along with the Director of Teaching for Maths (as Maths have the use of this lecture theatre as well) regarding the Wi-Fi issues in the Gordon Aikman Building, the students have been having issues using Tophat as the Wi-Fi is unreliable.  Information Services are now going to look at the locations of the Wi-Fi hubs as they are based at the front of the lecture theatre and would be better placed amongst the students.

INF1-CG two lectures last week were cancelled due to the Strike action, and one was cancelled this week.

There has been no Maths Workshops being held and marks have not yet been returned from the previous ones. [This is specific to some tutorial groups – we will check with mathematics on who is affected.]

 

UG2

The lectures haven’t been affected by the Strike but coursework 3 is late in being released.  *Action Stuart to talk to the lecturer*

 

Stuart asked the students if Probability with Applications lectures have been affected?   It was reported that there is no support to cover this course and INFPals don’t cover it either.  It was suggested to contact Maths Base because it is a Mathematics course.  Stuart explained that next year there is a new course starting called Discrete Mathematics and Probability this will be replacing DMMR and PWA.

UG3

CS had one lecture on Friday 28th February as this was a non-strike day and there will be none this week or next week, there is no support available on Piazza.  Coursework 2 is due to be submitted on Friday 6th March, coursework 3 is due on 3rd April and the students are unclear about what this will cover due to the lecturer being on strike.

CN the feedback for coursework 2 has been pushed back by 10 days due to students that have been granted extensions and coursework 3 relies on the feedback from coursework 2.

SDP the students are happy that their next Demo has been moved forward by a week due to the occupation of AT.

ILP the students have still not received any feedback that was due at the end of February.

FNLP the students were happy that the lecturer provided an office hour last week but there has been no indication that another one will be made available, there is still no response on Piazza.

 

UG4

MLP it has been reported that the students during the occupation have encountered disk cluster corruption their home folders have been invisible or inaccessible, a week’s worth of experiments has been destroyed.  Mohammed is going to look at how many Computing Support has received over this and investigate.  The students are asking if a one week’s extension will be available.  *Action Karen and Mohammed*

QCS, NLU+, FV and THF lectures and tutorials have been cancelled.

UG5

IoTSSC the occupation to AT meant the labs were affected.

MSc

Music Informatics lectures have been cancelled.

Speech Synthesis (PPLS) lectures have also been cancelled .

 

General

Stuart explained that what hasn’t been taught through the Strike action will not be assessed, if the exam paper has been set then any questions covering anything not taught will be redacted from the exam paper.

It was asked if toilet disinfectant dispensers could be installed in the toilets in AT.  Kendal has spoken to the Cleaning Supervisor, and the answer was it is something that will not be supplied.

The question about refunds due to loss of teaching,  Stuart informed the Reps that no refunds will be made, due to the terms and conditions, see the link:

https://www.ed.ac.uk/studying/admissions/terms-conditions

However, it may be possible to claim for additional expenses arising as a result of the strike. In addition the University will be establishing a Student Opportunity Fund that may be an additional source of funds.  See under the heading “Teaching and Studies” on this page: https://www.ed.ac.uk/student-administration/heaction

 

 

This entry was posted in Uncategorized. Bookmark the permalink.