Summer Progress

Hello, and welcome to the continuing blog for the RUSU VP Education. I took over from Ryan in July and everyone here at RUSU HQ has been working tirelessly to make huge steps of progress over the summer.

We've got a jam packed year planned, campaigning on issues ranging from the hidden cost of your education, extending library hours, plagiarism awareness and improving processes, and ensuring a strong student voice is heard through the QAA Institutional Audit.

A research project has helped us to gather the views of hundreds of students, course reps and supporting staff about how we can improve the Course Rep Scheme. I'm currently working on fitting all this together into a five year strategy to push this forward in leaps and bounds. This will be fresh, bright and shiny for the new term!

If you have any questions about the plans for the year, how you get involved, or generally want to talk about some issues around your university life then feel free to get in touch! My email is p.jeffreys@reading.ac.uk office number is 0118 378 4130 or mobile 07980 697089

We may be moving our blogs onto www.rusu.co.uk - watch this space!

Moving on.......Part 1

Email to Course Reps

Hi Everyone,

Just a quick email to thank you for all you hard work this year. I will be leaving the role of VP Education shortly. It has been a rollercoaster of a year with some highs and lows. The University is continually seeing the importance of student involvement and participation as key to developing the academic experience. Course Reps are the backbone of this which continues to grow year on year, your input is invaluable.

Next year will see more RUSU staff support towards the Course Rep Scheme and the continued development of the training. We have also elected a team of Education Reps, who will work at the Faculty Level ensuring student input at every level in the University.

If you need to contact anyone over the summer the details are:

Pete Jeffreys – VP Education 2007/8 – p.jeffreys@rdg.ac.uk or
Kath Davey – Advice Services Manager – k.davey@rdg.ac.uk

If you are leaving this year good luck, if you are continuing please stay involved. Next years team will email you with the plans for the future over the summer.

Thanks again for a brilliant year,

All the best

Ryan
r.j.e.bird@reading.ac.uk

more to follow.......

Education Reps

Hi all

Nominations for Education Reps have now closed. We have had a great response and you should be getting an email shortly to explain how voting works and who is standing in your faculty. Many candidates have started up facebook groups......just remember you can only vote for candidates in your faculty.

Not sure which faculty you are in - visit www.rusu.co.uk/edrep (at the bottom of the page)

Voting is all online - Friday 8th June - Monday 18th June.

As tony the tiger would say its going to be grrrrrrrrrrrrreat.

Ryan
r.j.e.bird@reading.ac.uk

Education Reps

Hello! The search is on for next year’s team of Education Reps. These are crucial to making sure that students are at the heart of university decisions which directly affect you.

For the first time we will be running these elections entirely online – you won’t even have to leave your revision desk to make your voice heard!

Being an Education Rep will mean a few meetings each term to make sure that the best interests of students are at the heart of university discussions. Of course this experience will look fantastic on a CV, you can use it to count towards your MASIV accreditation, and you will benefit from top quality support and training.

Much more information, questions & answers, and contacts, are available at www.rusu.co.uk/edrep - with the nomination form being all online!

Nominations close Thursday 24th May

Voting start soon.......look out for more details.

Course Rep Training

Course Rep Training - Week 4 - Friday 9th Feb - 12-2 in Palmer G03

Course Reps are the backbone of RUSU, and those involved in student representation from lectures to students, support staff to senior management all have the same ultimate goal, that being to improve education here @ Reading.

Most Staff-Student Committees will meet shortly or already have. Check if you haven’t heard anything already.

Ryan

r.j.e.bird@reading.ac.uk

Course Rep Training

Emails have been flying out this week to academic staff about the course rep training which is taking place in week 4 - next week, yet it feels like Fresher's Week was only days ago. So much has happen though since....

This evening i have finished the first issue of the course rep newsletter, which will go out tomorrow - once my email decides to work again!

Below is a copy of the training details - don't forget, even if you did the training last year please come along, your experience and input will be excellent for those reps who are just starting out.

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Training for Course Reps will take place during week 4. Please email volunteer@reading.ac.uk with your preferred sessions. Any student that sits on a Staff-Student Committee is welcome to come along, the sessions are interactive and informative. We had excellent feedback from last year.

Monday 30th Oct 6.30-8.30pm Palmer 106
Tuesday 31st Oct 12-2pm Palmer G05
Thursday 2nd Nov 12-2pm Palmer 107

Also this year we have Faculty Rep training

Friday 3rd Nov 12-2 Palmer G02

This will have RUSU and University input, and is an additional session to the Course Rep Training, providing more detailed sessions on meetings, minutes and communication.

We will re-run some extra sessions in week 7 for those who miss any of the above.

If you have any questions about the training or the scheme, please contact Ryan Bird r.j.e.bird@reading.ac.uk or visit www.rusu.co.uk/coursereps. Also I would be grateful if you could email me details of your new reps so I can add them to the RUSU Course Rep mailing list.

Many thanks

Ryan

r.j.e.bird@rdg.ac.uk

Student Representation, Libraries, National Student Survey and Clearing......

Since returning from training ive been busy working on student representation within the university. Traditionally this has been excellent in some faculties and poor in others. One of my aims this year is to build on the Course Rep system and develop representation at a faculty level which will be more coherent and productive. We seem to be good at the department level (staff-student liaison committees) and at higher university level committees (attended by RUSU sabbatical officers) but not at the bits inbetween (Faculty level). So by creating a clear set of guidelines for departments, schools and faculties along with recruitment of more reps (you guys!) that are trained we will see a massive improvement in student representation.

***Course Rep Sales Pitch***

Representation is vital in the communication network of the university; it gives students the chance to feed back on a range of issues. In recent years there has been an increased drive for students to have a larger role in the way their institution is run; through the course rep scheme you can be part of this representation – Please come and see me for more details.

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Also this week the results of the National Student Survey have been announced. 87% of Reading students said they were happy with their course, Dave and I discussed the figures this afternoon and an area for improvement appears to be assessment and feedback, we will be talking to the university to see how this could be improved, including working towards anonymous marking, more contact time on your courses and better representation (mentioned above).

Other work this week includes working on the years campaigns - more to follow soon,Ii have also visited Bulmurshe Library on the university satellite campus to look at the issues they are facing and discussing the exciting changes to the ground floor in Whiteknights library this year.

Several times this week I have visited the clearing office , with top up fees coming in, recruitment and marketing is high on the university agenda. The clearing team have been working hard all week and with an allocation of extra student numbers it has certainly been a challenge. It has been great to see more students on campus, so if your thinking of coming to Reading pop into the union and see us!

Anyway im off to cook dinner!

Ryan
r.j.e.bird@reading.ac.uk