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