R(D)SVS Postgraduate Taught Programmes Committee
Date: Wednesday 18 February 2015
Time: 1pm
Venue: Boardroom, NVS
MINUTES
Present: Anna Meredith (Chair), Susan Orr (Secretary), Brendan Corcoran, Bernadette Dutia (BMD), Neil Anderson,
Mike Thrusfield, Sharon Boyd, Brian Mather, Jane Barr, Fritha Langford, Neil Hudson, Kim Summers.
In attendance: Ben Morse (minutes)
1. Apologies
Apologies were received from Bryony Lancaster and Bob Dalziel.
2. Minutes from previous meeting (attached)
It was noted that BMD agreed to raise the matter of approval of external supervisors at School Postgraduate Studies
Committee rather than at the College PGTC as noted in the minutes. The matter was instead raised by SO at College
PGTC on behalf of AM and BMD on 10 December. With this exception the minutes were accepted as a correct
record.
3. Matters arising
Common Marking Scheme
AM apologised to the committee for not circulating the Common Marking Scheme from Susan Jarvis as agreed at the
previous meeting
ACTION: AM to circulate to members.
ELTC and international student writing issues
SB noted that Joy Northcott had not been invited to this meeting as previously agreed and noted this was due to
timing constraints.
ACTION: SB to invite Joy Northcott to a future committee meeting, as previously agreed.
Fees for Intermittent students
BMD asked what progress had been made on this issue. AM reported that Helen Adam (Income Section) had not
replied to her most recent e-mails. BMD and AM noted that it had been agreed by the committee that, as required
processes were in place for non-intermittent students, no reason could be seen for intermittent students only being
handled on a student-by-student basis.
ACTION: AM and BMD to renew attempts to arrange a meeting with Helen Adam.
Standing items
4. Update from programme directors
AM noted that most reports had been submitted by Programme Directors by e-mail prior to the meeting and that
due to the time constraints these would be included in minutes, though any pressing items of note were invited to
bring to the committee’s attention.
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Items raised:
Veterinary Imaging course
JB reported that there was a new Veterinary Imaging 10 credit course currently going through approval, it is hoped
for September, which would be open to students on R(D)SVS online programmes.
ACTION: JB to inform AM and SO once this course has a DPT code so it can be added to R(D)SVS programmes that
may need it.
Equine MOOC
NH added to the Equine report a vote of thanks to SB for her work on the Equine MOOC. Agreed by AM. SB reported
over 11600 students on the course and noted that the course organiser Andrea Ellis was doing a fantastic job and
that the teaching assistants (all Equine graduates or current students) were “fabulous”.
Items reported:
Animal Biosciences
The 10 students are progressing well. They are nearly finished the taught component and have begun to prepare
their project proposals for the dissertation component. One student is planning an off campus project which will be
carefully monitored as this is the first time AB has allowed this. There have been a few problems with ill health that
have affected a couple of students. All students have achieved a cumulative mark in the taught courses finalised so
far (60 credits) which will allow them to progress to the dissertation stage. Applications for next academic year are
coming in at a steady rate. Several conditional offers have been made; one unconditional offer to a deferred student
is being processed.
AABAW
There were 36 students currently on programme, of which 3 were working on their Dissertation whilst the others
were continuing to complete the Taught element. The recent SSLC meeting went well although mention was made
of the screen in the Teaching Room being too small to view if seated at the back of the room and the room being too
hot/cold. Solutions to these were being investigated.
Students had taken trips to Highland Wildlife park, Easter Howgate Beef unit, a commercial sheep farm, Langhill
Dairy farm, Easter Howgate Pig Unit, the Teaching Horses and the Roslin Avian research facility. Further trips were
planned to Charles River laboratories and to a local slaughterhouse. Visits to a fish farm and EDCH were in planning.
14 offers had been made for 15/16 entry, of which 11 were accepted. There were a further 43 applications to
process and this was ongoing. Some issues had been experienced with EUCLID as when College Admissions had
changed a student’s status to SB the applicant was then unable to upload further documents and applications were
being received incomplete by the programme team. This was under investigation by Paul Gladwell in College
Admissions.
CertAVP
Current numbers: 182 candidates registered for 253 modules; 59 registered since August 2014.
The exam boards for AFAVP, Cardiology, Zoo Med and Equine Dentistry went well at the end of January [45
candidates completing 65 modules].
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Effective use was made of the option to resubmit between the return of provisional marks in November and the
exam board in January, thereby reducing the number of candidates waiting for resubmission in 2015-16.
Assessment review meetings are underway as highlighted in the previous PGT committee meeting. So far,
amendments have been made to Small Animal Medicine and Surgery, with no changes required for Equine Dentistry
or Cardiology. The next review meeting scheduled is for Production Animal Practice.
Sharon Boyd has been invited to be a member of the RCVS CertAVP subcommittee, and this will benefit current and
future review processes.
Conservation Medicine
No major updates since last meeting. NA is travelling to India end of Feb to advance preparations and plans for the
practical Interventions course. A few applicants for next year so far but we have yet to do our main advertising push.
Equine Science
The Equine courses are running well in block 2 with the first assignments due in at the end of this week. We have a
number of new PPD students starting in block 3 in April. The dissertation course is going well and students were
pleased with the feedback they received for presentations that they completed before Christmas. This is the first
year that we put this in place so we were pleased to hear that the students found this helpful. It also allowed us to
make sure the students understood what they were doing and that they had a robust time frame going forward to
be able to meet the deadline date to complete their thesis. We also recently had a staff student liaison meeting
where the students were complementary about the programme and were enjoying the courses. The Research
Methods course is well into development thanks to the hard work of Ian Handel and will be ready for
commencement in April.
Imaging
MSc Imaging programme hopes to develop 5 new courses (probably 10 credits) either for September 2015 or
September 2016, depending on resources and budget. We will decide on the time frame at our Steering Committee
meeting on 19 March:
a)
b)
c)
d)
e)
Light Microscopy 2
Veterinary Imaging
Oncologic imaging
Imaging in inflammation and infection
Image Processing & Analysis 2
We have received positive feedback from Toshiba for the pilot study of doing their staff induction through our online
courses, so we hope to develop this further from September 2015 to go global with TMVS and maybe their
customers as well.
5. Update from School Postgraduate Studies Committee
AM noted that the last meeting of School Postgraduate Studies Committee was 4 December.
Approval of external dissertation supervisors
AM reported that it had been agreed that there would be an internal process involving AM, BMD, and Darren Shaw.
SO reported that the issue had also been discussed at College PGT Learning and Teaching Committee and that
Sharon Pearson would circulate a template provided by the Law School for approving supervisors external to the
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University. AM clarified that this related to supervisors external to the University, rather than the School, and that
external supervisors already approved (e.g. from SRUC) would be counted as internal.
ACTION: AM, BMD and Darren Shaw to take forward once information received from Sharon Pearson. AM to
update committee on developments.
6. Update from College PGT Learning and Teaching Committee
Auditing courses
AM reported that there was no overarching University policy on the matter and that it was left to the discretion of
Programme Directors how many courses each student could audit. Discussion was invited as per agenda.
Items for Discussion/ Approval/ Information
For Discussion
7. Auditing courses for on-programme students
Four points about auditing were clarified for the committee:




FL noted that for audited courses to appear on a student’s record they needed to be registered on a “Class
only” basis on EUCLID.
FL added that students being on a course “Class only” were not invoiced by Fees.
JB reported that Isabel Lavers’ position was that University policy was to allow students as much access to
materials as possible within reason.
JB also reported that there was no strict policy regarding the number of students auditing each course
although Imaging capped the number at 10 per course.
It was agreed that numbers of students auditing each course and number of courses each student could audit would
remain at the discretion of the Programme Director.
FL and JB reported that Imaging had introduced an admin charge (paid by ePay) of £15 per 10 credit course for
students to audit a course. JB reported only issue so far was lack of facility on ePay to note which course student
wished to audit. FL suggested a £30 fee per 20 credit course be adopted for all programmes. This was agreed.
ACTION: Programme Directors to implement £30 fee payable through ePay per 20 credit course and update
guidance accordingly.
8. Scholarship allocation to programmes (10% topslice)
AM noted that previous discussions had been held on this matter and that a document had been circulated
regarding the allocation. AM and BMD had held initial discussions about the issue of how to use the topslice and
reported that figures from 2013/14 showed roughly £25,000 available to R(D)SVS PGT programmes. FL and AM
noted that there had been an expansion of student numbers since 2013/4 and that this trend was set to continue,
thus the amounts available were expected to increase, but that only 2013/4 figures were available at present. AM
reported from guidance that this money was specifically marked for scholarships rather than a hardship fund. Based
on figures available AM & BMD invited discussion on two possible allocation models:
ACTION: AM & BMD to confirm whether figures given include Animal Biosciences.
Two full scholarships for R(D)SVS programmes.
It was agreed this was the simplest model, but would require a two-stage model of assessment with Programme
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Directors submitting candidates to a panel to avoid overloading a panel-only assessment. It was agreed that the
intention of this model would be to increase conversion rates. JB reported that SRA and CAM produce a survey
showing decliner rates and reasons which can be broken down geographically to help target regions where finance is
a common reason for declining an offer. NH and BC suggested setting strict criteria to make one scholarship
geographically-specific: e.g. developing world. FL noted that fee rates for on-campus students differed between
UK/EU and International and were higher for International students than the online programmes, while the oncampus UK/EU students’ rates were lower than online.
Dividing the money equally between programmes.
AM stated that this model would give Programme Directors responsibility for a budget of roughly £4,000 each. MT
raised concerns that if this related to only one year of the programme the money may not necessarily encourage
further conversion. NH agreed if used for first year of programme, but noted with BC that such a model could be
used to encourage conversion from Cert to Dip and Dip to MSc.
Evaluation
It was agreed that given current figures the two full scholarships model was the preferred approach.
ACTION: AM to take forward and discuss with David Argyle and develop a proposal for the decision-making
process and how applications will be filtered.
Other discussion
As part of discussions other areas of finance and scholarships were covered.
FL noted the China specific scholarships have now ended. JB noted that there were grants available for AABAW
students only for Scotland-domiciled students.
ACTION: JB to supply AM with contact information for GASP staff regarding yearly review of eligible programmes
for grants from Scottish Office for Scotland-domiciled students.
BC and NH suggested creating a hardship fund ‘war chest’ for students, but AM reported that 10% scholarship
topslice could not be used for this. FL noted that Programmes could roll-over leftover budget from previous years
and suggested this to supplement the topslice for scholarships or to create a hardship fund.
ACTION: Programme Directors to review leftover money in programme budgets to be rolled over and report to
future meetings of committee about position.
9. Pre-arrival questionnaire and Student Induction Framework
MT summarised the view of the committee that the paper provided was very UG specific and asked questions which
were either irrelevant or for which information was already available from applications. SB noted that the paper
submitted had not yet been altered to be more PG specific and feedback was required to inform further
development and implementation. After discussion it was agreed that such an initiative should be optional for both
students and staff.
ACTION: SB to write response and feedback for SEP, to be circulated to members before sending.
For Approval
AM noted that due to late entries and time constraints it would not be possible to fully assess items during the
meeting, thus invited discussion on the basis of approval in principle and detailed discussion to be conducted by e5
mail. No response by Friday 20/02 will be taken as approval. AM reported that the deadline for Programmes to go to
College if launch is to be September 2016 was April 2015.BMD noted the differences in length, format, and content
between items and asked that before passing items to College standard templates are correctly followed.
ACTION: AM will, as part of review before passing to College, ensure full details and documentation are available.
10. New programmes:
10a. MSc Veterinary Anaesthesia and Analgesia/ Pamela Murison
ACTION: approved in principle subject to electronic discussion.
10b. MSc Applied Disease Ecology in Livestock Production (Disease Systems and Control)/ Mike Hutchings
It was noted that this was a very thorough proposal.
ACTION: approved in principle subject to electronic discussion and correction of MSc/MVetSci and Conservation
Medicine/Applied Disease Ecology in Livestock Production (Disease Systems and Control) inconsistencies. AM to
meet with College regarding full business plan details.
10c. MVetSci in Advanced Clinical Practice/ Sharon Boyd
It was noted that this proposal, as discussed in previous committee meetings, was designed to be modular, flexible,
and to build CPD provision into a Masters.
ACTION: approved in principle subject to electronic discussion.
10d. MSc Clinical Animal Behaviour/ Natalie Waran
It was agreed that there was insufficient information to be able to determine fully. FL explained, but raised concern
about lack of exact detail, overall aim to design programme to complement existing and popular programmes (those
with more applicants than places) depending on market research. FL noted a lack of R(D)SVS internal specialism in
Clinical Animal Behaviour. JB noted that College allows for MSc programmes to have the same taught element and
be differentiated only by the dissertation.
ACTION: AM to ask Natalie Waran for more information in order to discuss the proposal fully electronically.
11. New CPD course: Wildlife Disease Management in Species Conservation Programmes
ACTION: approved in principle subject to electronic discussion.
12. Change of course name: ‘Comparative Animal Models’ to ‘One Health and Comparative Animal Models’.
ACTION: approved.
13. CertAVP Exam Board membership 2014/15.
ACTION: approved.
For Information
14. Update on Personal Tutor loads.
AM reported that this is ongoing and being handled by Sarah Henderson. Thus no update yet.
ACTION: AM to update in future.
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15. Enhanced Course Descriptor and PATH (https:path.is.ed.ac.uk/)
AM reported that this was still ongoing.
ACTION: SO to update in future.
15. AOB
IAD money
BMD raised the issue of a large amount of IAS money which needed to be spent before the end of the academic year
about which AM and BMD had held initial discussions.
ACTION: Committee to discuss electronically.
International Animal Welfare, Ethics and Law Courses
FL apologised to the committee for the late submission of various minor changes to IAWEL courses and a proposal
for a new zero credit research methods course.
ACTION: Committee to discuss electronically.
Date of next meeting: May 2015 (TBC)
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