A few reminders about some useful bits and pieces from our New Year round-up, in case you missed them....
Acronym Buster!
As part of our current staff development project, we have created a new Acronym Buster as an early output of the project, which we hope will be useful to anyone new to the sector, or anyone trying to navigate the new Scottish tertiary sector and the inevitable new acronyms.... TQEF, TQER, SEAP and STEP to name a few! Read more about the project to embed student partnership within staff development in our separate article - there's currently an opportunity to get involved in piloting resources during April and May 2025!
sparqs events and meetings calendar
We recently created a calendar webpage to pull together our schedule of forthcoming events and meetings all in one place. This will allow you to view all of key dates as soon as they are set and regardless of the bookings process or comms method...
- Events and meetings for members of specific groups are communicated via relevant mailing lists.
- Events which require registration can be found on our Events webpage once bookings are open (usually around 4-6 weeks beforehand).
Save the dates for our 2025 Summer training
We're delighted to be able to give early notification of our 2025 Summer training dates, for both That's Quality! and our Associate Trainer residential event:
- That's Quality! Colleges online event: Tuesday 22nd July 2025, 10.00am-1.00pm, via Zoom.
- That’s Quality! Universities online event: Tuesday 22nd July 2025, 2.00pm-5.00pm, via Zoom.
- That’s Quality! residential (for both college and university delegates): Monday 11th & Tuesday 12th August 2025, Queen Margaret University (full days, timings TBC).
Read our separate That's Quality! article from January, for further information on the event. Please hold the dates in relevant officer and staff diaries. Registration will open nearer the time.
Our annual, 4-day Associate Trainer (AT) residential event is a comprehensive training course to equip sparqs' ATs and Institutional ATs (from participating institutions) to deliver Course Rep Training during the following academic year. Read more on our AT scheme and IAT scheme webpages. Please save the dates if you take part in our IAT scheme, or are considering doing so! Registration for participating institutions will open nearer the time. sparqs recruits annually around March/April/May to ensure we have sufficient capacity within our own Associate Trainer team… so watch this space if you’re a rep who is interested in being employed by sparqs and trained at the below event to deliver CRT across Scotland in 2025-26!
- Associate Trainer residential event: Tuesday 26th to Friday 29th August 2025, Queen Margaret University (full days, timings TBC)
Social media
We recently joined Bluesky and we'll soon be getting started on LinkedIn. We're also currently still on X. Please connect with us on Bluesky and LinkedIn if you're on those and we've not yet found you!