The Higher Education Graduate Trainee Programme

Whilst still working as an intern at the University of Leicester’s Students’ Union I was made aware of a new grad scheme for higher education administration. The University of Nottingham have employed graduate trainees for a few years now, however this is the first year that a national scheme has been put into practice. Eight universities across the UK are taking part and have agreed to employ and fund two graduate trainees over 15 months. The universities taking part form three clusters, the London cluster, northern cluster and the midlands cluster. This year you could only apply to the instituion that you graduated from, however spend the 2nd 4 month placement of your contract at another university from your cluster. As the only 2 universities in the midlands cluster this year are Nottingham and Leicester, Nottingham is where I will spend my 2nd placement. As well as carrying out 3 placements in your host and guest university the graduates also become members of the AUA (Association of University Administrators) as part of the scheme and complete 1 module of a PG Cert in university management.

I have been lucky enough to gain a place on the scheme, after undergoing a long application process. After successfully making it through the initial application stage I was then offered a phone interview. Part of this phone interview involved giving a quick presentation of Post-Qualification Admissions (PQAs). Following this I was asked to attend an assessment day held at the University of Nottingham. There were 3 days, 1 for each cluster. The asessment day consited of a group task, 2 interviews, a comprehension test and a written test.The final stage of the application process was a formal panel interview. For the University of Leicester the panel consitted of 5 memebrs of staff, all significantly high up, including the Vice-Chancellor.

All 16 lucky graduates attended a week of training hosted by the University of Nottingham, which began on September 3rd 2012. This was a great opportunity to meet everyone, as well as getting a taster of the HE sector. The work wasn’t hard, but they worked us hard. Sessions were a mix of speakers from HE intitutions and related organisations, group tasks representatitive of HE administration issues, and self reflective activities. Overall it was well put together and a great starting point to the scheme. The majority of graduates including myself began work on our 1st placement at our host university on 10th September 2012.

Work experience in the University of Leicester’s HR department

As I wish to pursue a career in Human Resources I’ve arranged to do work experience in the HR department of the University of Leicester. This came about after I attended the Recruitment and Selection workshop as part of staff training. This workshop was run by Mike Powell (Recruitment Team), who I spoke to at the end asking for advice on how to get into the HR industry. Mike suggested contacting our head of HR, Alun Reynolds, and passed on his email address. Mr Reynolds then put me in contact with Sally Worth, who is the Interim Head of Organisation Development. Sally was happy for me to come over to HR for a 1/2 day work experience each week for as long as I work at the University. As of last week I now go over to HR each Thursday from 1.30pm to 5pm.

My first day in HR was mainly spent discussing what I would be doing during my time there and being introduced to the team.  Sally had spoken to the various departments within HR including Staff Development, Advisory Service, Equality, Wellbeing and Recruitment & Selection and arranged for me to spend some time in each of them. The plan for each week is shown in the table below.

Date	HR Department	Report to	Areas of interest/Notes
12-Apr	Staff Development	Linda Stirk
19-Apr	Staff Development	Linda Stirk
26-Apr	HR Advisory Service	Rhiannon Stafford
03-May	HR Policy	Helen Oliver
10-May	HR Equality	Chris Sharp
17-May	Wellbeing	Tentative Veronica moore
24-May	Recruitment & Selection	Kevin Ritchie

The above table only goes up to 24th May, however I will continue to go over each week until 18th July. 

I am hoping this work experience will give me a better idea of whether HR is the right career path for me, as well as providing some key experience to help me break into the job sector following my current internship.

My Internship and Future

The Leicester Graduate Internships Programme internships last for 6 months. My internship in the Students’ Union as Education Representation Officer was due to finish on March 18th 2012, however has been extended. The Students’ Union have extended it for 1 month until 18th April and even better GENIE, in the University Genetics department, have extended it until 18th June/July!

The Students’ Union has kept me on to continue looking after the Course Rep system, with the main reasons being that we are hoping to elect and train reps in the Summer term rather than in October, and as their accreditation needs marking. They however are not able to fund me for any longer than the end of April.

I currently coordinate the Employability Project which is run by GENIE and the Education Unit (see previous post). Professor Annette Cashmore is in charge of this project and has been impressed by my contribution to it and therefore would like to keep me working on it past April. For this reason GENIE will fund me for an extra 2 or 3 months meaning i will continue to work here until the end of June/July depending on the work load and funding available. As well as working on the Employability Project and running the Course Rep System this means I will also work on other projects led by GENIE, which are yet to be confirmed.  as well as being based in the Students’ Union I will spend 1 or 2 days a week in the GENIE offices.

Before my internship I had no idea what career I wanted to go into. The parts of my internship that I have enjoyed most so far have been designing the and delivering the training to Course Reps, keeping databases of project staff and Course Reps and interviewing for student staff positions. Based on this I am now looking to persue a career in Human Resources.   My first step towards this is to d some work experience in the University of Leicester HR department. I have spoken to our Interim Head of Organisation Development who is happy for me to go over to the HR department for a 1/2 day each week whilst I am still working here. The details of this are still to be confirmed, however it is definitely going ahead and will be a great opportunity.

The Employability Research Project

The Employability Research Project is run by GENIEin the University of Leicester genetics department and the Education Unit in the Students’ Union (SU). The team working on this project is a composition of 8 students and staff from both the SU and the University. I act as coordinator, which involves chairing the meeting and running the overall process directing the rest of the team. The project has been running since Novemeber 2011 and is ongoing.

The aims of the project are:-
•To find out what students and staff think employability skills are and where students and staff think students are getting these skills whilst at University
•To find out other ways that student and staff feel employability skills could be further embedded in the curriculum and developed in activities outside of academic studies.
•To produce specific guidelines to develop and improve the ways in which employability skills are embedding within the curriculum.

The research methods used to gather staff and student’s views include a survey, focus groups and one on one interviews with students and employers. Two staff and two student focus groups were conducted and each student working on the project conducted an interview.

There are two surveys, one for staff and one for students, both of which have many similar questions in order to draw comparisons between the views of the two groups. These surveys are available online via the following links and as hard copies.

www.surveymonkey.com/s/employabilitystudent  

www.surveymonkey.com/s/employabilitystaff

A lot of thought went into the content of these surveys by the students and staff working on the project. The content was discussed at several of our weekly meeting, which take place on a Tuesday morning at 9am. My role at these meetings is to plan the agenda, chair and set tasks for the students. A link to the online version was sent round to all staff and student by email via the department secretaries.

A week of promotion was carried out in which students working on the project actively encouraged students to fill out the survey on campus. For this I ordered pens (click to see design) showing the link to the online survey, flyers (design shown below), posters, box stands and lollies to encourage people to take. The students promoting were equipped with both hard copies of the survey and iPads to allow people to fill it in online.  As well as the students already working on the project we also hired some more promotional student staff. A huge incentive was given to students to fill in the survey which was that they would be entered into a draw to win an iPad!

Employability Flyer and Poster Design:

 

Other promotion which ran for longer than a week included using the designs for the poster and flyers as profile pictures on Facebook and putting them on the TV screens around our Students’ Union.  A Facebook event was set up giving people details of the project and the link to the survey. Lecture shout outs were given and emails were sent round via departments and to societies and sports clubs.

As a further push during the last week of term (week commencing 26th March) we put on a lunch in the Students’ Union allowing people to get free food in return for filling out the survey. We also added an extra incentive of handing in 3 surveys in exchange for a creme egg.

A picture taken at the promotional lunch, also showing the box stand:

Data collection will finish on 30th March 2012 after which a report will be written including the following:
•A literature Review
•Methodology
•Data Analysis
•Focus Group and Interview write up
•Conclusion and Recommendations

The report will be primarily written by the student staff who have all been assigned a section. A member of academic or Union staff will oversee or look after the students working on each section. I will oversee the whole report ensuring everyone is contributing and that everything is running smoothly.

A presentation of this report will be given by two or three of the student staff at several different academic committee meetings across the University.

So far the project is going really well. Student and staff input is on track meaning hopefully we will get some good results and be able to use the finding to improve the student learning experience and increase their chances of gaining employment following their studies.

Course Rep ED Advisory Committees

The ED Advisory Committees (ran by the Students’ Union) were held on Thursday 15th March 2012. There were a total of 4 sessions throughout the day, two for each college with two colleges attending the same session. The colleges are as follows:

Arts Humanities and Law paired with Social Sciences

 Medicine, Biological Sciences and Psychology paired with Science and Engineering

It was a chance for Course Reps to talk to other Reps in their college and highlight any similar issues or concerns students across the college might have, in a safe environment with no academic staff present.

My role here was to organize the sessions, planning the ‘agenda’, booking rooms and inviting the Course Reps to the relevant time slot. Although there was an agenda the sessions were very much student led as we wanted them to think about their role and engage with each other. The Agenda is shown below:

ED Advisory Committees Agenda 

Brief update/reminder about:

• National Student Survey
• I love my academic
• Employability Research Project 
• College Academic Committee Reps

Student Task :

• Write one thing on the post-it that you have achieved as a course rep e.g. chairing a meeting
• Write one thing on the post-it that you would like to achieve (wish list)
• Sort them by similarity under the college headings on the wall

The idea of the task was to get the Course Reps thinking about there role and experiences so far.

Below is a consolidated version of the notes made throughout the day, giving details of the common issues that tended to span across several departments and colleges. The notes also contain details of the College Academic Committee Reps, including what their role is.

Ed Advisory Committee Notes

Overall the day was a success and attendance was pretty good.

Course Rep Top-Up Training

Last week I held 5 Top-up Training session for Course Reps, with the help of the Ed Unit. These lasted just under 1 hour and had 2 main sections. The first part of the training gave information about campaigns and Course Rep related issues taking place over this semester. The second part of the training was a workshop on time management skills provided by Marta Ulanicka from Learning Development in the Careers department at the University of Leicester.

A reminder was given about the National Students Survey (NSS) which has been running since 6th February 2012 and will continue to run for a couple of months. This is a survey measuring student satisfaction which is completed by final year undergraduate students. he data gathered in previous years has made big changes to the student experience in many Higher Education Institutions across the UK. It can even lead to small changes at a course level. The higher the response to the survey the more chance there is of improving the learning experience for future students.This year our University are running a campaign to promote the survey and encourage students to fill it in. As part of this campaign the Education Unit are running a competition for final year Reps. We are asking them to promote the survey to final year students’ in their department. We will provide them with flyers to hand out in lectures or post in pigeon holes in their department.  There are a few rules they need to follow such as that they cannot force someone to take part in the survey and theycannot influence their response, for example they must not encourage them to say good or bad things about their department. The winners of the competition will be based on the following:

• The percentage of students in that department filling out the survey
• The overall number of responses that department gets
• The campaigning effort the final year course reps in that department put in as a group.

Each final year course rep in the winning department will receive a £10 Highcross voucher.

In March the Ed Unit will be running the ‘I love My Academic‘ campaign. We ran this last year and it was a great success. It is an award celebrating good teaching where students nominate academic staff and say why they should win. The campaign will run from 12th March  2012 to 30th March 2012, which is the end of the Spring term.  The survey will be filled out online at http://www.surveymokey.com. Close to the start of the campaign a link will be sent out to Course Reps who will be asked to distribute this and promote the campaign to students in their department.

This year Course Rep Accreditation will be assessed based more on qualitativerather than quantitative data. This means that it is better for the Reps to attend a few Course Rep events but put in a lot of effort and contribute a lot to them rather than attend many and contribute little.  We have asked them to record and submit anything that they do that they feel contributes to their effectiveness as a course rep. Doing it this way also means that they might think of somethings that helps them in their role that we hadn’t thought of. Their record can be in any format you like e.g. an online blog, word document or hand written. They must include evidence in your record such as photos, screen shots, email and references. The deadline for submission of their Course Rep Accreditation record is 30th March 2012 by 4pm.

A big change is being made to the Course Rep system this year which is that we will be hoping to recruit and train the 2nd and final year reps in the summer term! This is still very much in the planning stages and we welcome any input from existing course reps. The benefits of doing this include allowing more time to spread out the training and give more sessions, letting more Course Reps attend. We can also tailor the training more towards existing reps. One suggestion is to give different training sessions to Reps from different colleges. We are hoping to get existing Reps involved and ask them to contribute to the training sessions. Of course 1st year reps will still be elected and training in October.

Below is a link to the PowerPoint used in the training sessions including the section on time management:

Top-up training

 For the benefit of distance learning reps we live streamed two of the sessions. A recording of this session will be available on the course rep blog (http://uolcoursereps.wordpress.com) later this week.

Over the five sessions we trained 100 reps which is pretty good. All the sessions ran smoothly and general feedback on the day was good, so I’m very pleased with the events over all.

NUS Postgraduate Forum

On Saturday 21st February 2012 NUS held a forum at their head quarters in London to discuss the information advice and guidance that should be available to postgraduate students.  The HE White Paper in England suggested that there should be a national student survey and key information set for taught postgraduates. This has raised several issues which  the NUS Postgraduate Committee will be working on this term. These include the following:

• What might the student survey and key information look like?
• What other information, advice and guidance needs do taught and research postgraduates have?
• How can students’ unions improve how they offer IAG to postgraduate students?

Postgraduate students (both taught and research) and student union staff as well as members of NUS staff attended the forum to give a variety of perspectives on these issues. Myself (Annette Samuel, Education Representation Officer) and David Mason, a biological sciences postgraduate course rep studying cancer research, attended on behalf the University of Leicester.

The forum lasted 3 hours and the agenda was as follows:

1.30-1.45 -Welcome

1.45-2.15- A day in the life…

2.15-3.00- Key Information for postgrads

3.00-3.15- Break

3.15-4.00- Speed research – what can I get from my union?

4.00-4.30- Review, recommendations and reports

The majority of the day was group discussion on the issues that effect postgraduate students and what they need to consider or what motivates them to take a course. For some this may be a passion for the subject, often the case in scientific research, whereas for others it may be to develop and improve their career prospects.  All points discussed were minuted and will be sent to me over the next week or so, at which point I will share any relevant information with the course reps at Leicester.

For the speed research task we were required to highlight the key information a postgraduate might need from a students’ union website. Our table felt they would need information on opening times, accommodation, how to get involved and any postgraduate events the union is holding to name a few. We were then asked to look at the website of the university that another person on our table attends and see how easy it is to find this information. I’m pleased to report the feedback for Leicester was pretty good.

Hopefully the points discussed will allow our Students’ Union to have a look at what we provide for postgraduate students and highlight any areas that we need to improve.

NUS National Course Rep Conference

On Wednesday 7th December the NUS National Course rep Conference was held at the University of Leeds’ Students’ Union. I attended the event on behalf of the University of Leicester. The event consisted of an opening plenary with Usman Ali (NUS Vice President of Higher Education) and ‘Course Reps of the Year’ – Francesca Rust and Emily Short (Anglia Ruskin Cambridge), two workshops, a talk by Derfel Owen (Student Engagement and Participation Development Manger at the University of Exeter), a dsicussion group and finally a closing panel debate on the topic “Just for show? The future role of reps“.  I gained alot of information on ways to improve our own course rep system as well as details on up and coming campaigns that the University of Leicester should definitely support.

I would probably say that I found the opening plenary the most useful part of the whole day. Usman highlighted several issues that I will encourage our reps to get involved with. The main point i took away from his talk was the introduction of Post Qualification Admission (PQA). This is where students looking to start University will apply after they obtain their grades e.g. A-levels and not before. This eliminates the often stressful process of clearing which is part of the reason the NUS and Usman are pro PQA. Usman highlighted that many Universities and the Government are not quite on board with this and wants our reps to help students have their say on the matter. He proposed to us that we should encourage our reps to go to local schools and ask the future University students what they feel about this change. Furthermore we should get these students to write to Michael Gove (Secretary of State for Education) to make sure their views our heard. It will be their education this effects so they should have their say.

The first workshop I attended was titled ‘From Negative Complaining to Positive Campaigning: CAn we Change the Face of Student Enagagement.?’ It mainly focussed on student-led-teaching-awards (SLTA). At the University of Leicester the Students’ Union  has ran an ‘I Love My Academic’ campaign for the last two years, which is our version of this. This is a positive side of the role of course reps and enthasises the fact that universities are about teaching and not just reasearch. It allows teaching to be assessed by students and not just what academics think is good. The workshop discussed different ways of funding such awards which included making the award ceremony an event people pay to attend, sponsorshiop and the Vice-Chancellor. We also discussed how to chose the criteria upon which academics are assessed. This could be decided by students in a forum or by the Education Unit. It is important not to let big departments dominate the results so qualitative data is oftern best. This is a really great way to unite the students, university staff and Students’ Union so I really hope our campaign runs again this year.

The second workshop which was held in the afternoon (following a free lunch and talk by Derfel Owen) was titled ‘Developing Training For Higher Level Reps’ . This was held by Ian Delworth who is a training development advisor for Sparqs (Student Participation in Quality Scotland). At Leicester we do not have higher level reps although our course reps cover a lot of the tasks that other universities give to their higher reps. Many of the other universities had a much larger number of course reps to start with which may increase the need for higher rep roles.If we were to implement such a role at our university the extra responsibilities on top of being a course rep would include mentoring other reps and helping at course rep training, sitting on college committes, attendance at events such as this conference and a general increased accountability. Many institutuions recruit their higher level reps from exisitng course reps by interviewing them which I feel is a more productive and better approach than electing them or taking volunteers. Training for our higher level reps would perhaps be given by qualified trainiers such as NUS staff rather than by myself as for the rest of the course reps. The amount and content f the training would depend on the level they have already received. The number of Higher level reps would need to be discussed howeer i would suggest one per college. There were several other points raised on this topic which we would consider before implemting it in our institution. A point made by a member of staff from another university was one worth thinking about, he highlighted that higher level reps may have its downfalls and rather than being a positive thing it may demoralise the other course reps and make them feel their role is less important- just something to think about.

The debate on the topic “Just for show? The future role of reps”  that took place at the very end of the day (following a discussion group which was aimed at our own personal growth in our careers and not really course reps) was cut a little short due to over running of other sessions but still raised so important points. These ranged from advice on how to engage international students to what is the biggest challenge for course reps and student engagement this year. A point which I found particularly useful and will be sure to inform the Univerisy of Leicester course reps of was the answer to the question ‘ Is there anything set up to allow course reps from other universities to interact?’ A member of staff involved ins tudent support from the NUS answered this question. She said that there is a student engagement hub on NUS connect. This isn’t a forum but there are case studies with contact details provided. She went on to say that next year there will be more regional events and next summer a new student course rep netwring group should be. I feel that its important for different universities to interact to improve the learning experience across the whole country and am sure that this information isn’t known by many of our reps so am really glad it came up.

Overall I thoroughly enjoyed the conference and am glad I attended and that Leicester had representation there (depsite the three hour journey filled with train travel mishaps and bad weather).  Unfortunately due to the cost we were unable to take any course reps with us which I would of liked to as there were several other workshops targeted at them (I attended those meant for staff). In this post I’ve mentioned aspects of the day that I felt were particularly useful and I hop our University will take action on them where they can.

Course Rep Lunches

At the University of Leicester course reps across all departments are given the chance to attend a lunch with the Vice-Chancellor Bob Burgess and Pro-Vice-Chancellor Christine Fyfe. There are two lunches during each semester and this semesters lunches have just been. The first was on Thursday 2nd December from 12pm to 1.30pm and the second a week later on Thursday 8th December at the same time. These lunches provide a chance for course reps to take any issues that are above Student Staff Committee meetings within their department to the highest level possible. The Vice-Chancellor and Pro-Vice-Chancellor take comments from the floor and answer any issues brought to light. Of course an added perk of this meeting is that a free lunch is provided.

Attendance at the first lunch was relatively good with around 28 course reps turning up. The second lunch had a greater number with around 68 reps attending. Both lunches had a slight interuption by a fire alarm at the end of the first and start of the second, but other than that ran smoothly.

The first lunch was largely dominated by international students meaning many issues brought to the floor were specific to them. These included bringing the welcome program that Leicester runs forward and how they can experience the British culture more.

Other more prominent issues were things such as problems with the new student accommodation, Nixon Court. These problems included faulty lifts and lack of required facilities in rooms.  Bob addressed the subject saying they were contacting suppiers and informed students of a meeting for Nixon Court students that evening.

Students commented one or two issues in both sessions. One such issue was the fact that the Economics department has introduced coursework for 3rd year students. Not only was this not detailed in the handbook, but it was also implemented 3 weeks into term. Many students feel that this is unfair and say they chose the course mainly based on the fact it was pure exam. Christine Fyfe responded to this saying she agreed the late implementing was not acceptable however the department will be thinking of the students in their decision. Various surveys and studies have shown students grades are better when there is course work and many students in economics have requested it.

Another pressing issue was that the January exam timetables have still not been published.  Students would like to know their timetable further in advance to be able to effectively plan things such as revision timetables. Bob was shocked by this as timetable were supposed to be out well before the end of term. He met with the exams office the following Monday and they ensured it would be out that week. This was during the first lunch and when mentioned again the following Thursday timetables were still not out however Christine promised that they were due to be released the next day and if this was not the case to contact Bob directly.

There were many more issues covered all equally important to the students involved however I have given details of a few that stood out. As well as being a chance for reps to voice their issues to the Vice-Chancellor attendance at the lunch also counts towards the accreditation certificate they will receive at the end of the year which may be either standard accreditation, bronze, silver or gold.

In terms of my gain from organising and attending the event it was enjoyable and relatively easy to plan. I informed course reps of the event in their weekly news letter (sent out via email each Monday). Bob and Christine set the dates and I booked and set up the room in the style of a theatre with Alex Nutt (Academic Affairs Officer) and them sitting at the front.One downside to this semesters lunches is that they were both on the same day meaning if reps couldn’t attend due to lectures or prior commitments this was likely to be the same for both weeks. This however will not be the case in the second semester.  Pictures were taken to record the event, some of which are displayed in this post, and an attendance sheet was filled out as reps came in to record names for accreditation purposes. I took notes during each lunch which will be passed on to the Alex and kept as reference.  Following this lunch I thoroughly look forward to seeing what next semesters’ have in store.

Charity Univeristy Challenge

As part of my role as Education Representation Officer I am required to help out with Educational Campaigns. I was given the lead on the University Challenge campaign with the aim to enter a team from the University of Leicester into the BBC 2012 series of University Challenge. This campaign, or at least the promotional side of it, ran from Monday 7th November to Friday 11th November.

As part of the promotions we held a charity events called Charity University Challenge on Tuesday 8th November at 3pm. Sabbatical officers from the University of Leicester competed against staff from the Students’ Union in a University Challenge style gameshow. The Academic Affairs Officer, Alex Nutt, hosted the event dressed as Jeremy Paxman. The teams were asked general knowledge questions, written by a student at the university, with starter questions being worth 10 points and a subsequent 3 questions in the same round worth 5 points each. This lasted around 45 minutes.

Jeremy Paxman (the presenter of University Challenge)

The Sabbs were the winners, however it was incredibly close with scores drawn at the end of the question round. This led to a tie breaker question being asked which the sabbs answered correctly. They were awarded with a ‘Charity University Challenge 2012′ trophy and a signed photo of our version of Jeremy Paxman, a.k.a. Alex Nutt. The losing team, the staff, had to face a forfeit. each member of the team was given a chance to pick a mystery forfeit, ranging from cold custard to potpourri.

To raise money for charity on the day we held a raffle. We sold tickets all over the students’ union and drew the winning tickets at the end of the event. Loads of companies based in Leicester donated prizes to the raffle including a signed rugby ball from the Leicester Tigers, a voucher for a meal at Nandos and a £25 voucher for Yan hair. The winning team chose the charity to donate the money to, which was Shelter, the housing and homelessness charity. We raised £121 in total, which was brilliant!

Overall I thought the event went well, especially only had a week to plan and promote it and was pretty much the only one organising it, with help from Kirsty Minnis (Campaigns and Development Intern). If I’d had more time I’d of loved to have expanded the event having several rounds where students teams also compete. I would of also held the event at a more socaiable time such as early evening before a student night out. Finally with such amazing prizes I’d of liked to run the raffle for longer as well alllowing students to take full advantage of it and to raise more even more for charity.