At the previous meeting a request had been made for greater clarity in the Course Evaluation Policy regarding the option of including questions that identified specific members of staff. Senate Office staff had confirmed that a note on this would be added to the policy.

A response was still awaited from IT Services regarding students' access to Mahara after graduation. This would be requested again.

Action: Senate Office

A number of issues had come to light through the items on course and programme approval considered at the last meeting. The Clerk was in dialogue with the Deans of Learning & Teaching on aspects of the approval process. Revised guidance from LEADS on course and programme design was expected to be ready in the new year, and the Assessment & Feedback Working Group was taking forward the development of further training for proposal scrutineers. 

Senate Office had been taking forward a review of the annual monitoring process. During the summer two Interns, Ms Isabelle Hartung and Mr Joe MacFarlane, had conducted interviews with key stakeholders including Heads of Schools/Subject areas, School and College Quality Officers and Deans of Learning & Teaching, as well as carrying out research into sector practice.

Ms Hartung and Mr MacFarlane presented to the committee the overall themes arising from the review along with proposed actions. The key findings were that clarification was needed of the purpose and impact of annual monitoring, and of the various roles and reporting pathways and feedback loops. There was demand for more support and training for Quality Officers, with a view to Senate Office acting more as a facilitator than a 'police force'. It was recommended that there should be a stronger emphasis on good practice, including a link with existing recognition schemes. There was also a need to clarify the purpose of data and how it should be used in annual monitoring. It was suggested that the term 'annual monitoring' and the titles for the roles of School and College Quality Officers should be reviewed.

Members welcomed the informative presentation, broadly endorsing the outcomes, and made the following observations.

• It would be helpful to include a longer-term perspective (e.g. five years) in annual monitoring to identify long-standing issues and to demonstrate whether any progress was being achieved.
• If there was to be a formal launch of the annual monitoring cycle it would be helpful to highlight issues that had been identified in some parts of the University in the previous year and ask whether other areas were similarly affected.
• While the demand for training for Quality Officers had been identified, members suggested that at subject level the learning and teaching conveners who generally completed the returns for the School would also benefit from more guidance.
• There was a discussion about the need for synthesis of the information collected through annual monitoring and the identification of themes. At the same time, it was important that the detail should not be lost. It was suggested that School reports should be appended in full to the College reports.
• A calendar showing the complete timeline for the various stages of annual monitoring would be helpful.
• In relation to the suggestion of organising an open event to give feedback on the previous year's annual monitoring, identifying the correct time to hold such an event so as to capture full responses could be challenging. There was also a question about how this would sit alongside the Learning & Teaching conference which already had a strong focus on dissemination of good practice.

The Convener thanked Ms Hartung and Mr MacFarlane for their work and noted that members were welcome to feed in any further comments on the review.

ASC/2019/19.2.1 College of Science & Engineering

Dr Purchase introduced the report from the College of Science & Engineering noting that she had found the restructured form to have worked well. Three events were being organised in the College to celebrate good practice. In relation to issues needing further work, she highlighted requests for further guidance on managing good cause claims involving mental health. Consistency in providing clear assessment criteria and alerting students in advance to the kind of feedback that they would receive had also been identified as needing more work. In terms of issues for the University, timetabling and room booking had been highlighted again. While timetabling was rolled over from year to year, it was not clear why room bookings could not similarly be rolled over. An explanation for this was requested.

The College was looking at how to improve the preparedness of Masters students both from the point of view of admissions and of the provision of pre-enrolment materials. In relation to technology for enhancing learning and teaching, this was an important theme given that student numbers were increasing rapidly. The College was taking a number of different approaches, including developing the use of quizzes and automated marking.

ASC commended Dr Purchase on her report which provided a helpful synthesis of the various issues being raised through the annual monitoring process.

ASC/2019/19.2.2 College of Social Sciences

Dr Doherty introduced the report for the College of Social Sciences noting a wide range of successes and strengths, and good levels of student satisfaction. Efforts were being made to encourage the student voice and to ensure the provision of good support. Good cause in relation to mental health had been raised in this College too, with a particular concern noted by one School about increasing numbers of students graduating with some of the Honours assessment set aside due to good cause. A range of issues had been raised in relation to learning and teaching, including pressure arising from staffing levels where specialisms were difficult to cover in the event of illness. There were also challenges associated with recruitment of external examiners. As with other Colleges, teaching accommodation and timetabling had been raised, being highlighted as issues of fundamental importance to the student experience. Difficulties were noted with the course and programme approval process and low rates of return for course evaluation. Student attendance monitoring was raised and ASC noted that the Executive Director of Student and Academic Services was currently taking forward a project on this issue.

ASC/2019/19.2.3 College of Arts

Dr McCarthy noted that the restructuring of the College report forms had not been reflected in the School forms and this had made it difficult to bring together the points under 'what was working well'. A good level of engagement with diversity of assessment and graduate attributes/employability was reflected. A number of Schools were working on developing communities of learning. Teaching accommodation, timetabling and course and programme approval had been raised as issues requiring University attention. Differing rates of pay for GTAs across different Schools had been identified, and some difficulties had been highlighted in relation to cross-School and cross-College programmes.

ASC/2019/19.2.4 College of Medical, Veterinary & Life Sciences

Professor Bain introduced the College report, which was still in draft form not yet having been considered by the College Learning & Teaching Committee. There were good examples of provision of support for students and developments in learning and teaching (e.g. Life Sciences introducing more in-course assessment and feedback). There were issues relating to the consistency of advising support, with particular challenges in relation to provision at the distributed sites (e.g. clinical). Increasing student numbers, particularly when these were confirmed at the last minute, caused serious problems in relation to timetabling and teaching accommodation. Delays were also being experienced in recruiting staff replacements. There was particular frustration at problems that had been reported on many previous occasions not being resolved (e.g. inadequate control of heating in certain teaching rooms). Comments were included on different approaches to meeting the standard feedback return deadline of fifteen working days. It was noted that the Assessment and Feedback Working Group were currently considering aspects of feedback return timelines. There was some indication that a single standard return time was not necessarily optimal and that some variation depending on the type and context of assessment, appropriately communicated to students, might be more appropriate.

ASC/2019/19.2.5 Summary

The summary report identified the following common themes reported through the College Summaries:

• Suitability and quality of teaching spaces
• Student mental health. It was agreed that it would be appropriate to identify this as 'Staff and student mental health', as many of the reports referred to the pressures on staff arising from the various issues identified.
• IT facilities. Under this heading it was agreed that reference should be made to the various local or bespoke systems in use across the different Colleges. While these systems were often referred to positively there was an important question as to whether such systems could be made use of in other areas and whether a proliferation of different local systems was desirable. This was an issue to be highlighted to the World Changing Glasgow's Assessment & Feedback Project.
• Staffing
• University Systems
• Assessment and feedback
• Student attendance
• Good cause. A particular concern had been identified about the growth in number of good cause claims leading to increasing numbers of students graduating with incomplete assessment.
ASC noted that the reported areas of good practice would be passed to Dr Scott Ramsay for dissemination. The feedback received under the 'hot topics' would be passed to the Assessment & Feedback Working Group and to the Vice-Principal (Learning & Teaching) and the Assistant Vice-Principal (Digital Education).

Action: Senate Office

The Committee discussed a paper from Professor Morrison setting out a proposal for taking forward a university-wide consultation on two important aspects of the Code of Assessment: the operation of discretion and rounding. Discretion had been used in the University for final degree awards for many decades and as such was incorporated into the design of the Code of Assessment when it was introduced in the early 2000s. In recent times guidelines on the application of discretion had been introduced but some concerns were being raised about the potential for unfair outcomes for students. In light of other developments in academic practice it was suggested that it was timely to review the current position.

A related matter is the operation of rounding: the Code of Assessment currently states that programme grade point average should be calculated by aggregating the integers associated with the relevant overall course grades. These grades were usually the product of aggregated assessment component grades. Therefore the overall programme GPA usually reflected at least two stages of rounding. The paper suggested that if Exam Board discretion were to be eliminated and GPA alone were to be used to determine degree classification, there was a stronger case for using an unrounded GPA (i.e., the programme GPA should be calculated using all the assessment component grades, appropriately weighted, from all of the contributing courses).

Members reflected on the fact that the meaning of the term 'discretion' had become somewhat confused, particularly as in many areas borderline cases were now determined by application of an algorithm. This was a very different process from individual consideration of students whose results were close to a borderline. It was suggested that the removal of discretion might particularly impact certain categories of students, e.g. overseas students on short duration masters programmes. Currently, there were ways that discretion could be applied to minimise the impact of poor grades achieved in initial assessments.

There was a discussion regarding students' understanding of their grades and their ability to calculate their own GPA. The general view was that students currently found this confusing.

In relation to the operation of rounding, the question was raised as to whether the functionality existed in MyCampus to support calculation of programme GPA from assessment components rather than overall course grades. Ms Broad confirmed that the functionality existed but had never been implemented.

It was agreed that Professor Morrison's proposal should be supported and that a consultation on the operation of discretion and rounding should be taken forward across Schools and Research Institutes.

Action: Clerk of Senate/Senate Office

The Committee received information on the PSR reports due to be received during the 2019-20 session and the allocation of members to the reviews and follow-up reports. It was noted that members would receive draft PSR reports at an earlier stage in the process than previously and that the expected dates on which the reports would be forwarded would be confirmed shortly. The Convener would also receive the draft report at the same time as the identified ASC members.

Action: Senate Office

ASC/2019/21.2.1 School of Education

ASC received follow-up responses to six recommendations arising from the review that took place in March 2018. ASC agreed that the responses were satisfactory and no further information was required.

ASC/2019/21.2.2 School of Modern Languages & Cultures

ASC received responses to two recommendations arising from the review that took place in May 2018. One was a follow-up response and the other was a first-time response, as initially an incorrect version of the recommendation had been used. ASC agreed that the responses to both recommendations were satisfactory and that no further update was required.

New members of GSA academic staff whose responsibilities included teaching and assessing on University of Glasgow validated programmes were required to be recognised as Associate University Lecturers (AULs). Currently ASC was responsible for approving AUL nominations made by GSA. The committee received relevant details of the GSA staff via the report from the annual meeting of the UoG-GSA Joint Liaison Committee (JLC).

It was proposed that a new procedure be introduced where GSA assumed responsibility for the approval of its staff as AULs. This change would reflect the maturity of the partnership with GSA and was in line with other developments aimed at streamlining the administrative processes between the two institutions. GSA would be required to ensure that new members of its academic staff granted AUL status meet a minimum requirement in terms of academic qualifications and experience as outlined in the generic job description for the post of GSA Lecturer in place at the point of the member of staff's appointment.

The implementation of this procedure would be monitored and reviewed by the University on an on-going basis. GSA would be required to provide to ASC a summary of the staff it approved as AULs, via the report from the annual meeting of the UoG-GSA Joint Liaison Committee, or more regularly if required by ASC.

ASC approved the proposal, noting that it was essential that there was a mechanism in place for the University to be able to raise any legitimate concerns that arose.

At the ASC meeting held on 23 November 2018, the committee gave in-principle approval for GSA to develop an amended Programme Monitoring and Annual Reporting (PMAR) process. In the period since then, GSA decided that the PMAR process would not be amended but that the documentation used to support the process would be.

GSA had been invited to provide an update on this. A paper was received that summarised developments and the changes to GSA PMAR documentation. ASC noted the paper.

At ASC's meeting in May 2019, the committee considered the report and action plan of the Periodic Review of Postgraduate Research held at GSA on 6 September 2018.

It was noted that certain points in the report concerning training for research supervisors were not reflected in the recommendations and action plan being taken forward by GSA and ASC had requested an indication of how progress on these matters was to be monitored.

GSA had provided a response setting out various actions and progress to date. ASC noted these.

ASC received an update report on one outstanding recommendation made at the GSA Undergraduate and Postgraduate Committee Programme Approval meeting in relation to a major programme amendment to the MSc Visualisation programme. The recommendation concerned a review of the assessment timetable and ASC noted that this had now been completed. 

ASC received the audit report on course approval activity in the College of Science & Engineering in 2018-19. Spot-checking showed that the appropriate consultations had been undertaken and that in the main the documentation had been completed appropriately. 

ASC received the report on accreditation for session 2018-19. Members noted that some of the information for the School of Engineering was incorrect and that the accreditation of the School of Psychology had not been included. This would be investigated.

Action: Senate Office