UCL LANGUAGE CENTRE
Course Units 2007‐2008 Teaching Committee Review Meetings - Minutes
Thursday 12 June 2008 13.30‐17.00 188 Tottenham Court Road, room SB5 1.
2. Staff present: Claudia Geithner Jenny Rodgers Yoko Aldous Fernando Gracia‐Garcia Karine Roumetz Marie‐Laure Aris Dr. So Hiranuma Adam Salisbury Sylvie Batlle Dr. Christine Hoffmann Chizuko Seki‐Zdrzalka Anja Boeing Fabrice Lamotte Anne‐Sophie Vandamme Sara Bragadina Li‐yun Liao (arrived 14.30). Roberto D’Onofrio Juan Fernandez Mireille Michel Diego Flores‐Jaime Marc‐Georges Nowicki Maria‐Teresa Forteza‐Rey Catherine Plant Petra Garcia‐Rodriguez Carmen Requena Apologies: Edward de Chazal, Pierre Scordia, Cristina Testi, Antonella Veccia and Selina Zheng. WELCOME AND INTRODUCTION 1.1 Welcome to all. We will circulate the agenda for the remainder of June shortly, however Staff Development will take place for the whole of next week; 1.2 Statistics for this year’s Course Units were distributed to Coordinators, showing the average mark for each element, for each course and overall, as well as number of students. COLLEGE MATTERS 2.1 There will be a Quality Assurance review for the whole of UCL in March 2009; any Department could be inspected and the report will be published. The Language Centre received Academic Excellence following our review by the British Council. 2.2 A new Government points‐based immigration system will be introduced for foreign students; the conditions of which are that the student has an English Language / High School Certificate which will be institution linked, meaning they will have to commit to that university only. This will result in a huge increase in administration and UCL will have to ‘race’ to make offers to students. 2.3 There will be a new Director for the Development and Corporate Cooperation Office. 3.
LANGUAGE CENTRE MATTERS 3.1 Internal Quality Review: our final response to the IQR comments will be sent next week; it has been suggested that our Staff Observation policy is unclear, but all EAP tutors are required by the British Council to be formally observed; Course Unit Teaching Committee Review Meeting 2008‐06‐12 – Minutes We need to outline our points for the our strategic plan and include policies and staff guidelines on our intranet; 3.2 3.3 3.4 Annual Monitoring: we need to provide statistics from previous years and need to focus on comments and feedback from students, e.g. from the Staff‐Student Consultative Meetings. There has been a lot of re‐structuring of some of the EAP course taking into account the external markets; tutors on the Diploma course will now teach all four skills, not just one; James Sinclair‐Knopp will now Coordinate our English Course Units – as well as Part‐time English courses. There has been a huge increase in staff costs, especially on Self‐Access Centre and security so we will need to re‐think and review the staffing for the coming year ‐ are facilities used sufficiently in the Evenings and at weekends? Following the HERA job review we were not provided with extra for staff costs. 4. FEEDBACK FROM STUDENT EVALUATION QUESTIONNAIRES – provided by Language Coordinators 4.1 
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Roberto D’Onofrio – Italian Very positive response; good course content and refreshing that there is an oral component; Positive comments regarding Moodle, which Antonella used this year with her students; Difference of opinion on the Self‐Access Centre: some found it useful, but many didn’t use it. Some found the labelling confusing, e.g. “A1”; THE LABELLING REFERS TO THE EUROPEAN CREDIT TRANSFER SCHEME LEVELS – A CHART IS NOW DISPLAYED IN THE S.A.C SHOWING THE COMPARISON BETWEEN THESE LEVELS AND OUR COURSE UNITS / EVENING COURSE LEVELS. 4.2 
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Liyun Liao – Mandarin Very positive comments: courses have been challenging but interesting; Too many Chinese characters to learn and too much of the textbook chapter was covered; More material in the Self‐Access Centre; WE WILL REVIEW THIS, ESPECIALLY AS WE WILL BE OFFERING 3 NEW LEVELS FROM NEXT YEAR. 4.3 
Dr So Hiranuma – Japanese Overall students were satisfied with the course structure, teaching delivery, material, workload, as well as the feedback from tutors; Covering a wider range of Grammar for the lower levels seems to have been appreciated and assisted students in writing their projects; Many appeared to know nothing about the Self‐Access Centre and it seems many prefer to study at home using the internet as a learning aid; WE NEED TO REVIEW THE JAPANESE MATERIAL IN THE SAC AND TUTORS SHOULD ENSURE THAT THEY INTRODUCE THEIR STUDENTS TO THE FACILIITES ON OFFER AT THE START OF TERM. 
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Mireille Michel – French Generally comments were positive and enthusiastic; Some commented positively on the pace of the course (assessment) – we changed the date for the Listening assessment, following requests from students last year, moving it forward to take place later in the term, allowing more learning/preparation time; Advanced level students felt the way they were trained for our exams has helped them with other course work, e.g. essay writing – transferable skills; Self‐Access Centre: there is a good range of material on offer. 4.4 
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Anja Boeing – German Very positive feedback: courses had clear structure and content; Course Aims: some have commented that these are not 100% clear (the syllabus may not be clear to students initially as they will not understand all of it, e.g. grammatical terms); course aims should be reinforced throughout the year; Course Unit Teaching Committee Review Meeting 2008‐06‐12 – Minutes 
Self‐Access Centre: those that have used it gave positive feedback; some have never used it because so much material is now available online; WE ARE ACCUSTOMED TO RECEIVING COMMENTS ABOUT THE SAC BEING TOO SMALL AND CROWDED, BUT THIS YEAR NOW THAT WE ARE IN A NEW BUILDING WITH BETTER FACILITIES, COMMENTS HAVE ALL BEEN POSITIVE – “GOOD SPACE, GOOD STAFF”. When asked, “how much have you progressed?” some students still only state, “O.K” when they may have done much better. Perhaps they are unaware of their sense of progression, or they don’t know how to assess it. Many who make these comments are those who are ambitious and so put pressure on themselves. We need to alert them to their progress. 4.5 
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Fernando Gracia‐Garcia – Spanish Students have been very communicative and all seem happy with their tutors; the pace of term 1 is slow – in comparison to term 2; A few felt we that we were harsh with issuing penalties for submitting Projects after the deadline; Some were unaware of the S.A.C –more so than normal; those that have used it would like borrowing facilities for our material; Students commented that our Course Units classes were much more active /stimulating that their own Departmental courses. 5. FEEDBACK FROM VISITING EXAMINERS 5.1 The feedback was very positive; they approved of the small class sizes and said that we offered interesting courses and wrote great exam papers. We will circulate official Examiner’s Reports as soon as they are completed. 6. SYLLABI 6.1 6.2 6.3 6.4 Teams have already met to discuss changes to syllabi – please pass any updates to the office by next week, even if there are no changes, please confirm this. Please include any changes to books/materials; The French team would like to update the syllabus for Academic Purposes – Introduction as they feel that it no longer reflects what is covered and what students actually learn in class; THIS WILL AFFECT ALL LANGUAGES SO WE WILL DISCUSS ANY CHANGES FIRST IN THE COORDINATORS MEETING AND THEN UPDATE IT IN THE STUDENT HANDBOOK, ON THE SYLLABUS AND ALSO ON PORTICO. Chinese books at LCL seem to be more expensive than in Chinatown – we will alert Vic at LCL International Bookshop to this. One USA student taking LCSP6006, Spanish Current Affairs and Culture had problems with the level with regards to gaining credit for it at her home university; WE CAN ALWAYS CONFIRM THE LEVEL IN COMPARISON TO THE EUROPEAN CREDIT TRANSFER SCHEME LEVELS. 7. EXAMINATIONS 7.1 7.2 For the next year we will use answer booklets for our final examinations, in line with what students are familiar with in most other UCL Departments; this will enable students to refer to a piece of text while completing answers much more easily; it will also hugely reduce the time the office has to spend on formatting of the final examination papers resulting in a faster turnaround: ‐ the points columns will still be included on the exam question paper – some will also appear on the answer book pages; ‐ for gap fill or True/False questions students will simply be required to write the task and question number, followed by their answer; ‐ we will train any students, particularly continuing students as necessary; we will also note on the website with the past exam papers that answer booklets will now be used. Line Spacing: this year for the exam texts we used 1.5 line spacing to make the text easier to read and allowing space for notes/comments, however some students complained – perhaps Course Unit Teaching Committee Review Meeting 2008‐06‐12 – Minutes 7.3 psychologically the text seemed to be longer. Therefore for next year we will revert back to single line spacing for Level C upwards, while for Levels A and B we will continue to use 1.5 line spacing; Exam marking: the Reading & Writing exams should be marked out of 100 instead of out of 35 otherwise it is too inaccurate with Portico where we have to round up marks. We will provide all tutors with a Reading / Linguistic competence breakdown. ALL AGREED THAT WE WILL USE EXAM ANSWER BOOKLETS ALL AGREED THAT EXAM PAPERS WILL BE MARKED OUT OF 100 8. COURSEWORK 8.1 8.2 8.3 9. 10. Projects: in order to help prevent plagiarism it was suggested by Mercedes Coco‐Rodriguez (Spanish Visiting Examiner) in the Board of Examiners meeting on 04 June 2008 that we give credit to students for their Projects for the different stages of preparation, e.g. we give some marks for submitting a draft copy of their work – for showing us preparation, sources etc.: ‐ To have to mark and give points for a draft copy of the work would prove to be labour intensive; ‐ The oral exam is a good test as students are required to talk about their Project; ‐ Students in low levels are more likely to plagiarise as they may be unable to express themselves – we need to monitor this and offer support as necessary; ‐ Plagiarism has not been such a problem for the French team this as they have trained their students throughout the year on how to write a Project. IT WAS AGREED THAT WE WILL NOT GIVE SOME OF THE PROJECT MARKS TO STUDENTS FOR SUBMITTING A DRAFT – INSTEAD WE WILL DEDUCT 10% OF THE OVERALL PROJECT MARK IF A STUDENT DOES NOT SHOW A DRAFT COPY TO THEIR TUTOR. High level Projects: for Professional Purposes, the length/number of words is not so relevant ‐ the organisation is more important. We could ask advanced level students to include a table of contents to show organisation and increase the number of points awarded for presentation; ALL AGREED THAT FOR BUSINESS & CURRENT AFFAIRS LEVELS UPWARDS WE WILL INCREASE THE NUMBER OF POINTS OFFERED FOR ORGANISATION; STUDENTS SHOULD SUBMIT A TABLE OF CONTENTS; MARKS GIVEN FOR “SPELLING” WILL NOW BE GIVEN FOR “SPELLING” AND “PUNCTUATION” COMBINED. Handwritten Projects: It was recommended by the Visiting Examiner for Mandarin that students hand‐write their Project but some tutors feel that students should be encouraged to learn how to use computers: ‐ For Japanese, only the top levels, Professional and Academic Purposes students are allowed to type their Project, all others must hand‐write; ‐ any Chinese students studying Japanese for example may type in a Chinese character, this will be automatically corrected on the P.C; students should be encouraged to hand‐write every character. IF THE MANDARIN TEAM PREFER FOR STUDENTS TO USE P.C FOR THE PROJECT AS WRITING IS COVERED ENOUGH IN CLASS THEN THAT IS FINE – THIS CAN BE DIFFERENT FROM JAPANESE ‐ WE WILL CONFIRM THIS WITH THE NEW COORDINATOR FOR MANDARIN IN SEPTEMBER BEFORE TERM BEGINS. DATES FOR 2008‐2009 9.1 9.2 Term dates for 2008‐2009 were confirmed to all tutors. UCL Open Day: on Wednesday 25 June 2008 there will be a UCL Open Day taking place in the main campus: tutors are to be available between 10:00‐16:00 to sit at the Language Centre stand to answer queries and offer advice. ANY OTHER BUSINESS 10.1 Referred Assessments ‐ what format will these take: Course Unit Teaching Committee Review Meeting 2008‐06‐12 – Minutes ALL REFERRED ASSESSMENTS SHOULD BE CONSISTENT AND SHOULD BE OF A SIMILAR FORMAT TO THE READING AND WRITING EXAMINATION; ASSESSMENTS WILL TAKE PLACE IN MID‐SEPTEMBER, BEFORE THE NEW TERMS BEGINS; WE SHOULD HAVE MORE OF AN IDEA IN THE NEXT FEW WEEKS OF WHICH STUDENTS / WHICH LEVELS WILL TAKE THE ASSESSMENT – AS SOON AS WE KNOW WE WILL PASS THIS INFORMATION ONTO THE COORDINATORS FOR THEM TO PREPARE THE PIECES OR WORK. 10.2 SSC’s: We have some end of year feedback forms for the Year 3 Medics students who took an SSC with us this year – we will circulate these to all tutors involved who will need to complete a short report for each student. 10.3 Some tutors noted that a few of the internet connection points in the Language Centre, particularly in common areas and around the campus (Cruciform Building) do not work – we are encouraged to use advanced technology but are often unable to; some of the points in the Language Centre that do work are in offices, where staff already have their own P.C/Laptop: THE CONNECTION POINTS IN THE LANGUAGE CENTRE WERE ARRANGED AND CHOSEN BY THE PEOPLE WHO ORGANISED OUR MOVE TO BEDFORD WAY – WE WILL LOOK INTO COSTINGS FOR OPENING UP NEW AND EXISTING POINTS; THE COMPUTERS IN THE TUTORS QUIET ROOMS WILL BE REPLACED SOON AND SO WILL BE A LOT FASTER; IT IS IMPORTANT THAT WE INFORM THE I.C.T. TEAM IMMEDIATELY OF ANY PROBLEMS WITH EXISTING COMPUTERS SO THIS CAN BE RECTIFIED. Meeting closed at 17.00. Course Units Administrative Assistant +44 (0) 20 7679 5481 18 June 2008 Course Unit Teaching Committee Review Meeting 2008‐06‐12 – Minutes