Print

Education Zone (16th December 2016)

Minutes

Switch to Agenda

Name of Committee Education Zone
Date and time 16th December 2016, 10:00
Place Meeting Room 2
Present Members
(voting)		 Postgraduate (Research) Students Officer Giles Howard
Vice President Education Elliot Grater
Education Zone Student Group Representative Andrew Bamford
Physical Sciences & Engineering Faculty Officer Anthony Kenny
Education Zone Open Place Madeleine Ell
Medicine Faculty Officer Hoda Amar
Humanities Faculty Officer Samuel Dedman
Natural and Environmental Sciences Faculty Officer Tess Voysey
Education Zone Open Place Matt Cowley
Kate Weston
Education Zone Open Place Bonnie Liu
Postgraduate (Taught) Students Officer Jaya Surya Dhayalan
Absent with Apologies Union President Alex Hovden
Vice President Democracy and Creative Industries Cameron Meldrum
1. Introductions

1.1 Welcome and Apologies 

Apologies – Alex Hovden and Cameron Meldrum. 

 

2.1 Mintues from Previous Meeting 

Appoved. 

2. Elections

Open place elections:

  • Madeleine Ell
  • Bonnie Liu
  • Matt Cowley
  • Emily Watt
  • Alison Erwin
  • Alice Arnold

All Elected. 

3. Officers Reports

Hoda                     - Setting up Q+A for Year 4 students about the change in assessments
                                - Working to inform more Year 5 students as well
                                - Working to get more Union presence at SGH

Giles                      - Went to a conference in Nottingham
                                - Looking into PGRs teaching
                                - Planning with Doctoral College to celebrate PGR students events

Tess                       - Met with the Dean and Associate Dean twice
                                - Raised issues around tutoring differences across different departments
                                - Set up Biological Sciences Facebook groups
                                - Posted polls about missed lectures and to see how students wanted to catch up
                                - Coursework dates have been set
                                - Working with others to improve tutoring
                                - Working to get Environmental Sciences graduation at Highfield
                                - Making students aware of feedback for optional modules for next year

Anthony              - Equality and Diversity groups within faculty
                                - making staff more aware of academic representation
                                - working group to look into module surveys so that it is not just narrative
                                - Looking to change a course that is offered to make it more appealing
                                - Module choices are not timetabled properly so making changes to the system
                                - Circulation issues with students/staff 
                                - ECS does not have a system for the NSS champion in place
                                - Change to course rep structure hasn’t worked as well as planned in the faculty
                                - Physics labs need to be refurbished and will be doing so
                                - Working to get more communication between Physics and ECS societies
                                                - too many people to get everyone in a room together this term
                                                - looking to do it next term instead
                                - optics want to run a student research conference

Sam                       - VLE policy to get a minimum standard to what goes on blackboard
                                - Refurbishment at Avenue
                                - Rep led projects with 25-30 in attendance last Wednesday and planning for
                                  semester 2
                                - Working to improve the lack of advertising of Enabling provision
                                - Room booking issues (one person booked a computer room to use the whiteboard)
                                - Meeting between Aps and Society presidents taking place
                                - More Union events at avenue
                                - planning for elections on avenue
                                - Dean is coming to the next faculty forum

4. You Make Change

Printing credits:

  • PGRs have £250/quarter
  • ECS have printing credits, but they are looking to remove it
  • Agreement to scale back and put out more equally
  • University are looking to scale back to make it more sustainable
  • Elliot will ask other unions

 

Post Graduate Teaching:

  • PGR can teach UG and PGT
  • Survey last year about teaching process (pay/hours/etc)
    • Vast range of responses (Humanities – bursary, engineering – contract)
  • Looking to implement a common denominator policy
  • In economics, the feedback and marking depends on the PGR marking the work
  • Working group has been set up with the doctoral college
  • Some PGRs are given 10 minutes to mark per submission
  • Actions:
    • Discussions with Deans to make them aware that a campaign will be run by the union
    • Giles to produce a Factfile with core info to take to Deans

Lectures:

  • Research shows not as effective as other techniques – blended learning etc
  • Look into ways to improve the “value” of courses
  • Learning in lectures do depend on the lecturer (being an expert does not mean good teacher)

 

5. Fees

Not discussed, delayed to next meeting

6. Election Feedback Guide - Progress

Not discussed, delayed to next meeting

7. Funding

The Education Zone decided on the outcome of the second round of funding appplications. 

8. AOB

 

Other Actions:

  • Sam to upload a guide onto chat about responses over the exam period.

Key: P (Papers Provided), PF (Papers to Follow)