Staff Student Rep Meeting – Wednesday 29th January 2020

In attendance: Stuart Anderson Director of Teaching, Neil Heatley Head of Student Services, Adam Kirylczuk Computing Support, Karen Davidsons Student Support Officer, Lisa Branney Student Support Officer, Sophie Mills Student Support Officer, Kendal Reid ITO

Karen opened the meeting with introducing the Student Support Officers to the Reps and gave them a brief description of what they can do to help, they are there to help with any issues such as personal issues, academic problems, special circumstances that need raised etc.  The SSO’s would like to be able to raise awareness to the student body of their services and asked the Reps for any ways they think they could do this such as posters, cards, emails etc., they will follow up from this meeting by sending out some information to the Reps via email.

UG1

The students are happy with the way the INF1B course is running, the issue with the Wi-Fi in the Gordon Aikman Lecture Theatre is still on-going, so the lecturer has stopped using Tophat and is doing questions and answers with the audience and the students are happy with this.

Mohammed has raised the Wi-Fi issues with IS and hopes to have a response for next week’s meeting.  ** So far Mohammed has had no response – he suggested that if all UG1 students etc submitted a unidesk ticket this might provoke a response – discuss DoLT is not sure this would be seen as helpful or collegiate. **

UG2

Probability with Applications the lecturer is reported to be very good, and the course is much better than DMMR, DMMR will not be running next year from 20/21.

INF2A-IADS the students feel the course is becoming too Mathematical.

UG3

It was reported that some students had issues getting in touch with their PT to make course changes before the deadline of the end of week 2, Karen mentioned that if these issues arise then they should report this to the SSO’s or the ITO, the SSO’s can put this to the Senior PT and the ITO can help with the changes.  It is also worth mentioning that after week 6 if any course changes that are requested for Honours courses it then shows up on the students record as being Withdrawn from the course.  PT office locations can be found on the Informatics telephone list, students can go to the Forum and reception will allow entry.

http://www.inf.ed.ac.uk/people/telephone.html

It was asked if lecturers could be given a guide on how to use Tophat, Neil said that this information was sent out to them in advance of classes!

ST the lecturer is taking too long to set up her lectures, setting up Windows and Tabs etc.

SDP the Project Plan deadline is too soon, the students feel the turnaround between getting feedback returned and submitting  a 6 page report 3 days later is too short of a timescale to produce.

CS has a new lecturer and the students are happy with the way the lecturers are going, they felt that coursework one on the quiz was not helpful and it wasn’t a good format.   *Action Stuart*

UG4

Stephen Gilmore has now taken over from Helen Pain as 4th year Project Co-ordinator, so the students should have better communication, they have their Dissertation Writing session scheduled for next week.

UG4 access to the Forum will be granted next week.

UG5

It was asked when the deadline for the release of the exam marks are? It is tomorrow Thursday 31st January for all years.

DS the students have heard that the lecture times are likely to change and they are not happy with it, but due to clashes it is likely that the lecture time will change.

MSc

Semester one SSLC meeting has not been rearranged, Ray Finlayson in the ITO is waiting for Bjoern Franke to get back to him with a date.  *Action Stuart*

It was asked about the policy on lecture recordings, Stuart said at the moment the School does have an opt out policy, which allows a lecturer to opt out of having their lecture recorded within reason, but from next year it will be policy across the School to have all lectures recorded unless there is a very good reason not to.

If there are courses that are not recorded but need to be due to clashes then Stuart can talk to the lecturer to see what can be done.

General

Level 9 is still cold, Neil will bring this up at the Estates Meeting next week.  *Action Neil*

 

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