Mental health of students: It was noted that a consolidated response would be provided to the March 2019 ASC meeting for matters raised on this issue through 2016-17 and 2017-18 Annual Monitoring.

Moodle: No further response has yet been received further to the VLE Board meeting in December 2018.

At the November 2018 meeting of ASC it had been suggested that issues regarding the involvement of external examiners in approving assessments and other duties should be referred to the Assessment and Feedback Working Group. Subsequently it had been agreed that Academic Regulations Sub-Committee was the appropriate group to consider this as it related to provisions in the Code of Assessment. 

The Head of the Adam Smith Business School had provided more detailed information regarding the subject area's PGT dissertation marking practice. ASC noted that there was a clear procedure to be followed with careful sampling across markers and across different levels of performance. It was acknowledged that the significant growth in student numbers in recent years had exerted considerable pressure on staff carrying out marking. However, the committee had a number of questions and agreed that a representative from the Adam Smith Business School should be invited to the next meeting in order to discuss this further. In relation to current practice, ASC wished to know whether the marking of all markers was sampled (the wording 'representative of all markers' was ambiguous), why supervisors acted as the sole marker, what action would be taken if a problem was identified at stage 2 (statistical analysis), and what the difference was between stage 3 and the final part of stage 4 (both of which appeared to be a critical review of feedback and checking for internal consistency between feedback and grade awarded).

In order that ASC could also take a view on the marking practice in the longer term there were additional questions: how many PGT dissertations were marked each session, how many staff were involved in marking, how many of the supervising/marking staff were adjunct, what training and debriefing all markers (including adjunct) received, information about the context in which marking took place (other competing priorities within the School at the critical marking time), whether consideration had been given to possible alternative deliverables such as shorter project reports (which would be as rigorous as conventional dissertations but would reduce the marking burden).

It was noted that the marking practice set out by the Adam Smith Business School was not compliant with the University's expected marking practice, and it was therefore important that ASC considered carefully whether this was acceptable, noting that the situation appeared to have been created largely by the continuing increase in student numbers.

The Convener invited members to provide some feedback on their involvement as ASC representatives on College Boards of Studies. Members confirmed that they were participating and felt that they were making a valuable contribution. There was a discussion about the fact that ASC members no longer built up expertise through involvement in Programme Approval Groups (as these had now been discontinued) and that it would therefore be helpful for more experienced members to play a clearer mentoring role in supporting less experienced colleagues. This might mean, for example, attending Boards of Studies together and/or meeting/corresponding before meetings to discuss the proposals. It was agreed that the Clerks to the College Boards of Studies should be alerted to this.

Action: Clerk

Dr Dick introduced the report from the College of Arts, noting a number of similarities with the issues that arose in the Undergraduate Summaries. There were good rates of conversion, retention and performance, and innovative developments such as work placements and guest lectures. Good practice was reported in object-based learning and in the range of modes of assessment. Good use was being made of university resources such as Kelvinhall. While the innovative developments were positive, a lack of administrative support made their delivery challenging.

A concern had been flagged regarding possible underreporting of disability as compared with undergraduate students, though it was not clear what the reason for this was. Members acknowledged that on a one-year programme there was a significant challenge in needs being identified at a sufficiently early stage. Mr Bennion agreed to find out whether postgraduate applicants were invited to declare a disability in the same way that undergraduates applicants were.

Action: Mr Bennion

Some problems had been reported in relation to the administration of admissions due to staffing issues in External Relations. It was also highlighted that there were difficulties in holding internal conferences because of the high associated costs. The view was that this was inhibiting conference activity for postgraduate students in a way that did not occur to the same extent at other institutions. Members reported similar difficulties in other areas of the University and while costs were less of a problem for 'teaching events' there were some unavoidable costs such as janitorial costs for events taking place out of hours.

Staff had reported that the amended regulations for the award of merit and distinction on PGT programmes had worked well. In relation to graduations, a number of issues were raised, e.g. limited facilities at winter graduation (it was believed that some of the concerns had been addressed for the winter 2018 events) and the fact that for January-start students, a November graduation was not possible so students were required to wait until the following summer, which in many cases meant that they were unable to attend. The Clerk of Senate reported that the Graduation Strategy Group was looking at a number of these issues. The University wished to encourage students to attend a graduation ceremony in person but it was recognised that alternatives to the current arrangements might have to be developed.

The hot topics section of the report (teaching space refurbishment and on-line marking) had prompted a lot of valuable feedback which would be passed on to the relevant areas.

A reference was noted to Philosophy considering the introduction of applicant interviews to ensure that those accepted had appropriate English language skills. Members considered that this was undesirable as it was not practicable to take this approach across the institution as a whole. It was also noted that UKVI might not accept alternatives to IELTS qualifications as satisfying the relevant thresholds. A general concern regarding English language proficiency was echoed by members from other colleges.

Dr Woolhead introduced the report for the College of MVLS. Good student satisfaction had been reported with staff highly committed to supporting students in their learning. There was also considerable positive feedback regarding the centralised administrative support. Support had become centralised in the last couple of years and although this had been a challenging process, it now appeared to be working well, promoting consistency of practice in areas such as good cause and assessment and feedback, and providing for better cover for absence. Good practice was reported in terms of training in graduate skills, and on the number and variety of projects offered and the way that these were integrated with research within the College.

While external examiners commended much of the practice in assessment and feedback, heavy staff workloads had sometimes resulted in issues with the timing and quality of feedback. It was felt that there needed to be clearer communication on the timing of the return of feedback to students and on what constituted feedback.

The question had been raised as to how communications to students could become more carefully targeted to particular cohorts, as distance learning students were receiving communications relevant only to on-campus programmes. The same point was made in relation to part-time students, for whom a number of standard communications would not be relevant. Various concerns had been raised in relation to mental health support. Members noted that in Social Sciences dedicated support was available, but this was particular to the context in that College (the member of staff being a Mandarin speaker). It was noted that there had been a number of developments in mental health support since the 2017-18 session (such as the recent introduction of Big White Wall for the whole University community).

In relation to the hot topics, there was a will to increase the use of on-line marking but experience showed that limitations in the system were discouraging staff. There were still a number of difficulties with teaching accommodation, particularly arising from very late confirmation of student numbers. There were reports of serious disruption to lab-sessions early in the session resulting from this. In addition, rooms booked with the correct capacity were found to have a smaller capacity when set out in the required layout.

Dr Doherty introduced the report for the College of Social Sciences, highlighting the fact that PGT now formed a very substantial part of the College's provision. Considerable strength was demonstrated in a broad range of learning and teaching, course design and innovation. In particular Schools, the continued increases in student numbers was having a very significant impact on staff workloads and on the university's systems (e.g. room bookings). Adequate investment and support were crucial to ensure delivery of provision, and staff required information about what was being done to address these pressures. Low return rates on EvaSys were noted, and comments had been made about the importance of optimising staff access to results. Student satisfaction issues had been raised in relation to shared Library and IT facilities at the Dumfries campus. There were also concerns about ensuring that Admissions fully understood the nature of the PGT programmes being offered. 

The Summary report identified key themes for the University's attention, highlighting that many of these had also been reported through the Undergraduate summaries (suitability and quality of teaching spaces, student mental health, IT facilities, staffing, EvaSys, assessment and feedback, plagiarism).

The following themes were noted specifically in the Postgraduate summaries:

• Disability reporting and provision
• Student recruitment and admissions. It was agreed that this should be expanded to 'Student recruitment, marketing and admissions'.
• MyCampus: Under this heading there was reference to inflexibility in the system to accommodate teaching, particularly where this was delivered by specialist lecturers and external experts with limited availability. This led to difficulties in room scheduling and notification of room changes to students. Arts noted having experienced service and reliability issues but it was not clear whether these had been raised directly with SLSD.
• Student fees and PSR: It was agreed that these could be removed from the list: PSR referred to one isolated comment, and student fees referred to a specific issue that had already been addressed.
• English language proficiency
• Conference costs
• Postgraduate student survey
• Winter graduations
• University communications
• It was agreed that the following should be added to the list: the course approval process (as a number of comments had been made about the complexity of the process), and facilities and support available outwith the hours of 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. (to reflect the increase in on-line delivery and the fact that teaching hours were expanding).

ASC members was pleased to note the summary of areas of good practice. The heading of 'Innovative teaching practices' could be expanded to 'Innovative teaching practices and practice-based learning'.

The Convener extended his thanks to the Quality Officers for the large amount of work involved in bringing together the College Summaries. While there was a wealth of information, it was particularly useful to ASC to receive an overview which highlighted the key issues. It was noted that a Quality Officers meeting would be taking place shortly and the Convener expressed his willingness to attend.