1. COURSE REP TRAINING

2. OVERVIEW By the end of the session, you will have;
A clear understanding of the role and responsibilities of a Course Rep
Considered how to represent and communicate with your classmates and academic staff
Good knowledge of where to go for support

3. ROLE AND
RESPONSIBILITIES
What do you do and where do you fit in?

4. DISCUSSION To what extent do you agree with the following statements:
1. A course rep works for their department
2. A course rep highlights issues but does not solve them
3. A course rep should represent their own views first
4. A course rep’s main role is to attend meetings
You work with departments – but not for them. Don’t feel obliged to ‘tow the party line’ as it were – if your course mates are worried about something or do not agree with a policy, you are well within your rights to bring it up. Departments will sometimes do things that are not in the interests of the students, in which case you are encouraged to tell them that.
Yes and no. Course reps do highlight issues to their departments, who should be responding to and working them out, however sometimes course reps will be asked for more information – to undertake short surveys, or gather students for a focus group – which can help to solve the problems.
No; they are a student representative – not a representative student: there’s a big difference! They represent the views of their course mates. While they may speak from personal experience, they should try and represent the views of their course mates on an issue accurately; even if they sometimes disagree with the view.
It is an important part of the role, but by not any means the only part as we will see later.

5. PURPOSE
To represent your classmates’ views and opinion on all matters relating to teaching and learning, including assessment and feedback and learning resources.
To continuously improve the student learning experience in partnership with both your department and the Students’ Union
To provide both positive and negative feedback to staff
To act as a communication channel between staff, students and the Students’ Union
1. Representation obviously is a critical part of this – on all matters which might impact teaching and learning. Whether that is a small impact for a small group, or a large impact for a large group, representing them equally is important.
2. Partnership is the important concept here – the University should be willing to listen to and work with students towards better student experience and higher quality education. Where we fit in is providing training, resources, support and sometimes the levers higher up the University if issues aren’t – or cant – be addressed at a local level.
3. Make sure that where there are both, that they both come up. Reprimanding a department for failing to do something is all very well, but if there is a feeling that they should be commended for something else, don’t forget to do that as well. Departments sometimes run their own initiatives completely independently which are brilliant, and for which they should be praised, especially if its something that clearly has positive impacts for students.
4. Communication is vital, at all levels, to actually enable the other three components.

6. RESPONSIBILITIES Student Staff Consultative Committees (SSCCs)
Meets once a term
Both student and staff reps present
One staff and one student co-chair committee
An opportunity to share student feedback and concerns
Course Rep Events
Organised through the Students’ Union
Throughout the year
All course reps and faculty reps
Wide range of Department, University and Sector issues discussed
As discussed earlier, representing your peers is the most important component of being a course rep. But there are a couple of things that enable to you do to that, which it is important you attend.
The most regular responsibility is attending your Student Staff Consultancy Committee meetings. As you can see here, these are once a term, and they discuss everything from survey results – as we will see later – to assessment and feedback concerns, timetabling issues, and broader requests to discuss issues specific to students on your course even down to are the rooms any good.
An important thing to note here is that periodically there will be information discussed in SSCCs that shouldn’t be discussed with your course mates – not explicitly anyway. If you’re in any doubt about what you can and can’t discuss, feel free to ask the staff co-chair to confirm.
At the bottom here you have course rep events – these are specifically for course reps and faculty reps to get a chance to come and network with each other in the SU. Some of them will be training-centred, some discussion-centred, some examining the broader HE sector, and some just a chance to meet each other... Either way there is always free food and or drink, and I would encourage you to come along and join us as your experiences from working with students and SSCCs is truly invaluable to working for a better student experience.

7. WHERE DO COURSE REPS FIT?
As you can see here, this is where the course reps fit in; every level relies upon the others for information in different ways. Without the course reps, the department and faculty reps wouldn’t necessarily know what’s going on in the everyday academic lives of students. By the same token, information such as restructures, major timetabling or resource changes tends to come from the Faculty reps who will hear that first.
Faculty reps sit on Faculty Education Committees, which bring together staff from all the departments in that faculty to decide common policy and work out how to deal with faculty-wide issues as well as how to enact University policy.
The faculty reps – there are 2 UG, 2 PGR and 2 PGT per faculty – together with the UG and PG academic affairs officers and a representative of the academic societies together form Academic Affairs Committee, which provides a high-level forum for the creation of SU policy on academic issues, and to work with or respond to the University’s academic decisions and policy.
Department reps are chosen from within the already elected course reps across a department, and act as important points of contact both for the course reps and the faculty reps.
The course reps are a vital first tier as you can see here. There are, give or take, about 300; so you will have colleagues across your department and faculty who are experiencing similar issues, which you are of course encouraged to talk about

8. THE STUDENTS’ UNION Undergraduate Academic Officer – Saul Cahill
Postgraduate Academic Officer – David Evans
“Strengthen and help shape thriving learning communities”
I mentioned in that last slide Academic Affairs Committee of the Students’ Union. Academic Affairs is a committee of Assembly, which is the main policy-making body here in the Students’ Union, which decides how we as an organisation act and react to certain issues.
Members of Academic Affairs sit on Assembly, as do both of the Academic Officers, Saul and David.
Saul’s Priorities are: -
David’s Priorities are:
We also have our own strategy in which we aim to: build learning communities and collective voice.
“Build a powerful collective voice for students’ academic interests”

9. COMMUNICATION
How do you represent students’ views?

10. ACTIVITY What communication methods work best on your course?
Discuss as many methods as you can
Choose the three most likely to work in your case
Identify the pros and cons to each of those three
Split

11. TYPES OF COMMUNICATION
Anonymous feedback box s
Focus Groups
Online Survey
Facebook group
One to one meetings
Chats before lectures
Drop in hours
These are just some of the examples!
From research conducted last year by the SU, we’ve heard all of these – shout if there’s anything not on here that you use or have heard used.
In terms of quality of one versus another, it very much depends on what you’re asking – and what your course mates are trying to tell you, as well as personal preference. For instance, one-to-ones and drop ins can be peerless for the quality of the discussion and making yourself visible as their representative, they can be very time consuming and go off-track with relative ease. Anon feedback allows individuals to be more candid, but prevents you from easily acting on their behalf (unless a huge group expressed the same concern).
I would certainly recommend getting involved in or setting up a Facebook group for your course – if you don’t already have one that is – as these can be utterly invaluable informal discussion spaces, as well as creating a social and polling space.
The SU can provide you with direct support around focus groups and online or paper surveys from a methodology point of view, and we have got templates of both for you to work from.
Paper survey

12. Potential SSCC Timeline
Based on previous experience, a likely timeline of agenda items at your SSCCs might look something like…
November
Review of departmental survey results
Summary of the previous academic year, highlighting changes for this year
February
Proposed changes to the curriculum for next academic year
Asking for student comments and feedback so far
June
Discussions around exams
Examination of Module Evaluation Questionnaires (MEQs)
What could you bring from your course?
Not all SSCCs will work to this timeline – some will have meetings in October, for instance, but broadly this is an overview of what might come up and when.
Postgraduate differences might include:
SURVEYS; PTES, PRES rather than NSS
STUDY SPACE; Hotdesking, allocated desks
SUPERVISION; Difficulties and reporting routes for problems

13. THE FEEDBACK LOOP Detailed discussions Gather opinions Attend SSCC
After an SSCC, its important to close feedback loop – its beneficial for students to know what’s happened with the information and opinion you gathered, as well as where it went.
Its also important for you to hear from department what they’ve done with it and students to know how they feel about the changes, as well as the department to make sure that students are fully informed.
This might require you to bring an issue up that was discussed at a previous SSCC again, to ask what happened with that – it wont always be immediately obvious to students where these things go and what happens.
Provide feedback

14. NSS RESULTS Teaching on my course 84.27 84.14
Learning opportunities
Assessment and feedback
Academic support
Organisation and management
Learning resources
Learning community
Student voice
Overall satisfaction
BOLD DURHAM Non England
27 questions fit into these groups; contact for more details if you would like to discuss departmental results.

15. WHAT ISSUES CAN I BRING TO AN SSCC?
Undergraduate:
Postgraduate:
Supervision issues
Module structures needing redesign
Conference opportunities and funding
Additional lectures for difficult areas
Guidance for more consistent marking
Study and community spaces
Resources, either library or lab
Lecture Capture availability on DUO
Teaching opportunities
Shrinking seminars to enable discussion and debate
Timetable changes
These are some examples of things that have been raised by reps in the past, all of which have had tangible outcomes.

16. SSCC EXERCISE You have 12 minutes
Break into your groups and discuss, with your facilitator, the agenda as set.
You have 12 minutes

17. SECTOR ISSUES National The new Office for Students (OfS)
The future of the Teaching Excellence Framework (TEF)
Strikes
Fees, funding and the Augar Review
Costs
Marketization
International
Brexit
Publication access
Competition
OFS talk about things that are going on, why, Sam Gyimah and the changes going on there (HEFCE, OFFA, access etc)
TEF has changed; includes information on long-term earnings and recently dropped proposals to investigate teaching intensity
Strikes, past and potentially future (UCU Pensions dispute, now pay and conditions)
Augar Review due January/February – fees might fall, unis might be funded in a different way.
Costs are growing for students faster than funding for them, how do people make ends meet? Employment, and commuter students
Marketization generally is having an impact on everything from university governance to how they advertise (and how they’re allowed to); Durham was 97th now 114th in world – Times Higher Education Sept 2018
INTERNATIONAL
Brexit difficulties
Publication access (Germany, China particularly), rising costs
Rising competitiveness of universities all over the world, especially in Asia, is changing the way that universities think and who they think of as peers and competitors.

18. FAQS AND NEXT
STEPS

19. STUDENT PROBLEMS
A student complains about a lecturer
Encourage them to resolve by contacting the lecturer, departmental admin or module leader, as appropriate
A student has been accused of plagiarism and wants to appeal
Signpost to Students’ Union Advice Centre
A student has an issue with lecture notes on DUO, or a lack of Encore recordings
Speak to lecturer on behalf of students where appropriate
These are some rough pairs of problems and solutions – again all things that we have had in the last year or so.
Students are asking for more study space within the department
SSCC

20. WHO TO GO TO FOR SUPPORT Your Faculty Rep
Saul Cahill (Undergraduate Academic Officer) –
David Evans (Postgraduate Academic Officer) –
Richard Bruce (Policy Coordinator (HE)) –
Your student or staff SSCC co-chair
Facebook group – Course Reps 18/19
So this is a smattering of people across the board who can help if you need any manner of support.
Obviously, while it depends on the issue, by and large the order is co-chair to fac rep to Saul or David, as these sit on progressively higher levels of university body (earlier diag). I am happy to support at various levels as required – please don’t feel it has to escalate before you shout for help!