It’s been a crazy few weeks with management’s recent Proposals taking up everyone’s time, but I’m gonna take this opportunity give an update on the Structure of the Academic Year discussions. It’s quite a long explanation but you can skip to the words in bold to get the general idea!

Senate on Wednesday approved the final proposals for the Structure of the Academic year. These proposals came out of two prior meetings which I spoke at a lot, and these meetings were informed by the student feedback (from the survey) and staff feedback. Overall there was an acceptance that the current credit structure was too complex, but that there was not a strong enough argument for radically changing the structure of the academic year by moving to a fully ‘semesterized’ model.

The final proposal, which seems to have been authored mostly by Academic Registrar Owen Richards, took into account these issues pretty well. I am happy that it represents the needs and concerns of the student body as best as possible. What it recommends is:

-         That the credit structure is simplified, so that courses are generally all worth 6, 12, or 18 credits, or other multiples of 6. This means that it’s much easier to choose electives and/or courses in other Schools and Departments. It also makes it easier to work out your overall grades across different terms and years, and it makes life easier for staff.

It will take a bit of work for staff to massage the current courses so that their credits fit into multiples of 6.  Some fo them are currently worth things like 7.5 credits or 16 credits, so these will need looking at. But the workload on staff should not be overbearing, and the overall effect should be very positive.

-         That we look into providing a time for mid-year assessment for Year 1 and Year 2 courses. Many courses do mid-year assessment already but do it during teaching time, so students have to write essays or do exams in the same week as they still have lab, lectures or seminars. The proposal says we should look into providing a formal time-period for this to happen, allowing exams where there is a good reason for having them. The proposal does not suggest when, so there is still the question of whether it should be before or after the Christmas break. There will be further consultation & working groups to work out where we could fit the mid-year assessment period.

-         That Undergrad final years will have their terms weighted 15/15 rather than 12/18. In other words, Autumn and Spring courses will be weighted the same in the final year of Undergrad courses. This is to reflect that most UG courses don’t do formal teaching in the Summer of final year, so Autumn and Spring terms actually get about the same level of teaching.

At Senate there was a productive discussion about the proposal, and some good points were made. I was especially keen to point out that the positioning of mid-year assessments was placed in a way that did not disadvantage students from poorer backgrounds. I value your opinions on this, as I’ll be working with the Uni next year to make recommendations about where mid-year assessment should go (if it does go anywhere at all).

The paper passed with no vote taken, and the VC was actually quite abrupt in calling debate to a close and declaring the paper passed. Even as someone who supported the paper I was very concerned about the way it went through. Some Senators were against parts of the paper and expressed their concern about this process following the meeting.

Click here to see the paper that Senate was asked to consider. It’s a bit of a beast but you can see the final proposals on pages 3-4 (under ‘TLC Recommendations to Senate’). Hope this is more helpful than confusing! If you’ve got specific concerns do get in touch.

I’d like to say that I’m really sorry I didn’t get a chance to give briefings to School Reps before their School Meetings, which is something I was hoping to do. As it happened, the School Meetings were completely overtaken with discussion over the Proposals, and I was completely busy working on the Union response. Hopefully we can get more staff support for the Reps scheme in the future, so that we can offer you more briefings to help Reps represent their students.

That’s all on the Structure fo the Academic Year for now. Hope you have a great Christmas holiday. I’ll be at work next week, then off for a sweet sweet break in the West Country!