Education Council
MINUTES
Date: 27th January 2015 Location: ALT2
Attendance:
Helen Loxley-Blount (Earth Sciences Dept Rep)
Alex Clarke (PG Officer)
Izabela Pawlic (PIR Dept Rep and Campaigns Officer)
Paviter Mahal
Charlotte Mason
Max Lawson
Leah Hewerdine
Sophie Skilton
Charlotte Lozano
Sebastian Koba
Laura Webber
Nguyen Le Phuong Khanh
Daniel Curran (support and minutes)
1. / Opening Remarks / ActionEP opened the meeting and introduced the agenda
2. / Announcements
Social after this council
Still need a PGT LTQC rep
LTQC question - do you find assessments at the end of the year useful
Answer - Yes second year had spoken to first year and seen change had been out into place after theirs, regarding order
Question - Has anyone felt they haven't been listened to through them
Answer - Not so far
Question - Are they for every module
Answer - yes they are done for all units
Can we get a warning when they are coming up
They gave us at the exams, not good for filling in questionnaire
Course progress charted after they are filled out (you said we did)
Welfare handbook
Sid has out in place a handbook to assist personal advisors with giving advice outside of academia.
Would be good for reps to tell students that personal advisers can help with more than just academic issues. We can also share this information with reps
Teal Tuesday allowing course reps to have office hours also come into talk to us about course and issues you are facing
Go green week
We have lots of groups involved
Ice explore talk about climate change, with q and a
Debate about fossil fuel divestment
Alex ask is it the case of them investing in us of a case us investing in them
These need to be kept separate
Marian Brett
Staff litter picking
Smoothie bikes
Bike doctor
Eclectic bikes
End of the week rave
Register to vote
Izabela introduced herself
Our aim is to get students to register to vote not just home students but international students in local elections
Very important to get students caring about the uk elections
So please register and advertise to others
Voter registration day on the 5th
Emma
We realised we have power to swing local elections wards such as Egham Hythe
3. / Hidden Course Cost
Got lots of information on courses and what students have to pay for but also highlighted some knowledge gaps
What aims do we need
Izabela - books are very expensive, could we put a scheme together with library for past years to sell on to New Year’s or sell back to library?
Emma we recently acquired hundreds of books and we had a problem with moving them.
Plan to have some book swap scheme as we used to in founders west
Could we do a big swap shop at the end of the year?
Facebook book swap or sell group
They don’t release reading lists earlier enough to help with that, if done in summer could be easier to do
Need to be a safe online way to do it
PIR have opened a forum for all years to sell books on
EBooks what is departments switch like. Take up?
Most financial sense would be to reduce the amount that books are needed to be bought
Promote the schemes we have, library loans, ebooks etc.
4. / Library Update
Emma presented the new library plans
Post plans in the course rep group
Students can feed into the process
Close
Next Meeting 24th February 6pm ALT1
Education Council