UG STAFF STUDENT LIAISON COMMITTEE
Tuesday 8th November, 2005 at 1.00pm
Dorothy Hodgkin Building
Lab 2, Room DH0.44
MINUTES
Present:
Dr Mark Trueman (MTr) – Chair/Director of UG Studies
Dr Nicky Edelsytn (NE) – Year 1 Tutor
Dr Richard Stephens (RSt) – Year 1 & Year 2 Tutor
Dr Claire Fox (CF) – Tutor/Student Support
Sue Wilshaw (SW) – Administrator/Minutes
Jon Shilton (JS) – VP (Education & Welfare), Students Union
Shamma Baig (SB)
Daniel Fenton (DF)
Rosalind McKenna (RM)
Adam Tingle (AT)
Claire Briant (CB)
Emma Dove (ED)
Liam Kirwan (LK)
Lisa Todd (LT)
Sarah Denley (SDe)
Candice Harding (CD)
Mayush Visram (MV)
Yr 1
Yr 1
Yr 1
Yr 1
Yr 2
Yr 2
Yr 2
Yr 2
Yr 3
Yr 3
Yr 3
Mark Trueman welcomed the new student reps to the meeting and also, Jon Shilton who is the Vice-President
(Education & Welfare) for Keele’s Students' Union and had asked to attend the meeting.
1
Apologies:
There were apologies from Sarah Dazeley and Vicky Gillis (year 3 reps)
2
Minutes of the last meeting 04/10/05:
Approved
3
Matters Arising:
4)
Health & Safety Committee student representative
Lisa Todd agreed to attend the committee as student representative
5)
Student Representative elections
These took place in October and five first student students were elected to represent their cohort.
In addition, two new second year representatives were elected.
6)
PSY-10004 feedback
RSt reported that a meeting was still to be held between himself and concerned students
4
Level 1 Business:
SB informed the committee that a student had contacted her about the lack of off campus access to
Learning & Teaching Server materials from the School. MTr explained that the School does not permit
off-campus access for a variety of reasons including: (1) impact on student lecture attendance; (2)
completeness of materials should they be made available to off campus access; (3) intellectual copyright
issues; (4) staff contractual issues.
Some students also reported problems with downloading L&TS materials. These problems seemed to be
a consequence of trying to use incompatible storage media on library PCs. As library IT resources are
beyond the control of the School it was suggested that students take this issue up with the library.
5
6
Level 2 Business:
a)
ED asked whether the MCQ exams carried a correction for guessing. MTr explained that a
correction for guessing is used for the MCQ examinations in principal psychology modules but
not for the two psychology CSP modules (PSY-10007 and PSY-10008).
b)
MTr read out an email from Year 3 rep Charlotte Malkin, who was not at the meeting regarding
the way qualitative methods were taught. MTr informed the student reps that as the module
leader was not at the meeting and not able to comment, he would pass on the information to him.
CF commented that this module was under review and would be looked at in due course.
Action: JRH
Level 3 Business:
SDe reported that students were having difficulty accessing copies of ‘Bjorklund, David F,
Children’s thinking; development function and individual differences’. NE replied that problems of
this nature should be reported as soon as they arise and not wait for SSLC meetings. She asked
SDe to email the information to her so that she could act. NE agreed to contact the year 3
students regarding this matter.
Action: NE/SDe
a)
b) MTr read out an email from Sarah Dazeley, who could not attend the meeting regarding
communication problems, specifically via email from the school as students had experienced
teething problems. As the other third year reps had no further information on this it was not
possible to explore this specific problem further. MTr offered to contact Sarah Dazeley and try to
get more details.
Action: MTr
SW reported that this highlighted another problem in students contacting the admin staff. She
reported that at the moment students are contacting her by email and not sending copies to
anyone else within the school. This became a problem recently because her recent illness meant
that emails from students were not being actioned. SW suggested that in future, students should
send emails to multiple recipients so that they can be dealt with immediately. It was agreed that
SW would email all the year groups detailing who to contact within the school office.
Action: SW
c) NE reported that there was no Special Study Session following the series of four lectures that
were given by DVR because the overview and themes were developed across the lectures which
had all been given by DVR. NE apologised for the breakdown in communication which meant
that some students attended the session. Following this, NE sent out an email asking students
for any issues that they had planned to raise with DVR but none were received.
7
8
Any other Business:
a)
MTr outlined the usual procedures for bringing items to the SSLC. (1) The School asks that
representatives give an estimate of the number of students raising each issue. (2) That,
whenever possible, sufficient notice of issues to be raised should be given to the School so that
relevant members of academic staff can be invited to attend the SSLC and respond directly to
agenda items. (3) That the emphasis is placed on the speedy resolution of student issues by
informal means (i.e. through tutors, modules leaders, year tutors, DUS & HOS) thereby saving
the SSLC for more substantive issues that concern significant numbers of students.
b)
MTr recommended that all new student reps should attend the StAR training that will be provided
by the Students Union on offer. JS commented that this training was being organised at the
moment and that he would inform all student reps of this in due course. In the meantime he
urged the reps to speak to him as there were other sources of information he could offer them.
c)
MTr recommended that new student representatives look at the Psychology Programme page of
the Learning & Teaching Server where the minutes of previous SSLC meetings could be found.
Date of Next Meeting:
Tuesday, 21st February 2006
The meeting finished at 1.30pm
MTr/sjw081105