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Teaching and Learning Delivery

October 2022 TLD Bulletin

1.       Staffing updates

In the Programme Enhancement team, Daniel Bayes is moving from their intern role to a Teaching and Learning Coordinator (Programme Enhancement) role, focusing mainly on enhancing External Examiner processes and role within the Quality Framework.

Charlotte Beresford-Jones will be joining the Programme Enhancement Team shortly, moving from her current role as Student Engagement Graduate Intern (Peer Support) to a Higher Education Intern.

Steve Luddington has been appointed to Teaching and Learning Co-ordinator (Programme Enhancement), after carrying out a very similar role temporarily for the previous 3 years as part of the University’s quality function prior to SEP.

2.       Scheduling (Timetable and Examinations)

The first week of semester is always a tense time for the Scheduling team. 10am on Tuesday is the most popular time for teaching, and historically has been the point when IT systems creak under the strain of 40,000 students trying to look at their timetable at the same time.

Over the last year, the Scheduling Team has been working closely with Scientia (the company which provides the university’s timetabling software) to improve resilience and these efforts came to fruition with our system handling the peak load successfully for the first time in 8 years. It was, therefore, unfortunate when we got past this point only for university authentication and wi-fi to go down for an hour! Despite this blip, staff and students have enjoyed uninterrupted access to their timetables which has been a huge relief for us all.

3.      Support for student assessments during 2022/23

We will not be issuing a set of Assessment Commitments for this academic year, as we have over the past two years as a result of the pandemic. A number of the temporary arrangements put in place have now become ‘business as usual’ and other elements are being retained for this year, with the details being communicated to students in a start of year message from Professor April McMahon, Vice-President for Teaching, Learning and Students. These include:

  • Moderation and scaling: normal procedures for moderation and scaling will continue, with discussion at Exam Boards to review any circumstances that have affected either individuals or groups of students to enable appropriate action to address these. Extra Faculty and University Exam Boards will take place if required to consider any circumstances that might have a general impact on student performance.
  • Degree classification: Since the beginning of the pandemic, the ‘boundary zones’ where students are considered were extended by 1% – this will remain in place for Covid-affected cohorts. This isn't a guarantee that students will receive the higher classification, but we'll use the mechanisms in our regulations to individually assess every case within the boundary zone. 

From 2022/23 onwards, postgraduate taught students will be able to achieve a distinction, even if they require a re-sit or receive a compensated mark, unless their programme has specific accreditation requirements which do not allow this.

  • Re-sit fees: Going forward, re-sit fees will now no longer be charged for any taught students.
  • Changes to mitigating circumstances: We'll continue to accept mitigating circumstances requests for a wide variety of issues, and we'll accept a broader range of evidence for those requests.
    • Letter from a GP - For 2022/23: We won't require a letter from a GP or healthcare provider for medical conditions. Instead, students can provide a variety of alternative evidence to support their request;
    • Death certificates - We won’t require a death certificate as evidence in cases of bereavement. Instead, students can provide a variety of alternative evidence to support their request;
    • Long-term or recurring medical or mental health conditions
      • Students who are registered with DASS will not normally have to provide medical evidence for mitigating circumstances requests that are related to their disability/ies.
      • If they have a long-term or recurring medical or mental health condition that affects their studies, students should strongly consider registering with our Disability Advisory and Support Service (DASS). This will allow them to access a variety of support that is appropriate to their needs.
      • Even if students are not registered with DASS, we will only ask for medical evidence once for mitigating circumstances relating to a long-term or recurring medical or mental health condition (unless there are accreditation or fitness-to-practice requirements).

4.   University launches new GP service for students and staff

To supplement the University’s existing student and staff wellbeing facilities and resources, they have now successfully linked with the local Robert Darbishire GP Practice (who are also known as ‘Better Health Manchester’) to run a pilot with a branch surgery of theirs running alongside the Occupational Health Services on campus (within the 4th floor of Crawford House).

This will provide a more holistic proposition to support and care for both students and staff, with plans to work in partnership in a number of ways. For example, running a joint sexual health clinic and focusing on harm reduction in the use of drugs and alcohol as well as working together with colleagues from our Counselling & Mental Health Service and DASS too. The bigger opportunity though will come from encouraging far more of our students to register with a GP and some degree of cross-referral for students who would benefit from support from one of the other services that we offer already from Campus Life and with a slicker gateway to navigate through to the NHS specialist services.

The pilot launched on Monday 5th September 2022 with capacity for some 12k patients, which is broadly representative of 21% of our combined 42,000 student and 12,950 staff population.

Students and Staff can choose to register with Robert Darbishire GP Practice (aka Better Health Manchester) here: https://www.rdp.org.uk/triage/new-patient/ or by using the QR code shown below:

 University GP practice image with QR code

5.       Institute of Teaching and Learning (ITL)

  • Workshops

We have a number of Workshops coming up this month, as our Open Workshop Programmegets underway, such as:

  • Blog posts

Our TEA Blog posts weekly content on Teaching and Learning. This month, we’ve had posts on Student employability by Prof Jackie Carter and on Blending entertainment into education, with Dr Ben Chapman. New posts on a range of teaching and learning topics every Friday!

  • Document-sharing websites

We also would like you to be aware of a number of document-sharing websites, to which course content belonging to the University has been uploaded:

A)      Student-document-sharing sites (e.g. StuDocu, Course Hero, OneClass, Study Drive)

The Library’s Copyright Guidance Service sets out below some simple steps for requesting the removal of material from these sites:

Additionally, staff can report concerns about a website that enables, or appears to enable, academic malpractice through selling or sharing essays, or publishing course materials to cheating.spam@manchester.ac.uk

Note that these sites frequently present themselves to students as legitimate ‘study resources’. The Student Comms teams will be issuing a series of messages to students about the pitfalls of using these sites to share work that is either:

  • the intellectual property of the University, such as course materials, or
  • student-authored work, which may lead to concerns about academic malpractice

B)      Uversity

We are aware that Uversity (a charitable offshoot of Chegg) is approaching lecturers directly, e.g. via LinkedIn, and offering to pay for licensing their course materials.

Course materials (and in fact any intellectual property (IP)) made during the course of employment are normally (as a matter of both law and University policy, and with few exceptions) the intellectual property (IP) of The University (see section 3 of the University's Intellectual Property Policy). As such, they must be used only in accordance with the relevant University policies.

Any materials shared outside of the institution will contribute to what is already a confusing picture to students, and allow essay mills to gain details of the topics we teach and our assessment arrangements.

Further information:

We are happy to announce that our ILM Level 5 Award in Coaching and Mentoring course is open for applications. We have a total of 10 spaces so please don’t hesitate to apply.

For further information and to apply for this course please click here.

Closing date for applications is Friday 7th October 2022.

View more resources and information on Coaching including the fun Mindset Self-coaching tool on the ITL website.

6. Contact

If you are aware of other staff members who would like to be added to the TLD Bulletin mailing list to receive future editions of the Bulletin, please contact Miriam Graham (email m.graham@manchester.ac.uk).

If you are from a Collaborative or Validated Partner and you are having difficulties accessing any of the linked documents or web pages, please also contact Miriam Graham (m.graham@manchester.ac.uk).