We are pleased to launch our new resource, Suggested questions for course reps: COVID-19 edition, designed to help course reps gather crucial student feedback during the ongoing health crisis.
As we come to the beginning of a new academic year, partnership-working between students and staff remains vitally important to institutions’ decision-making processes. The emergency response may be over, but significant changes continue to be made to learning and teaching in the 2020-21 academic year. Student reps play a crucial role in capturing as wide a picture as possible of the impact on the student learning experience, and in building solutions which safeguard, as much as possible, this experience.
The resource outlines some suggested questions that course reps may want to ask the students they represent, organised under each of the Student Learning Experience themes. This set of questions has been updated in light of the COVID-19 pandemic, and each section includes a commentary outlining the key ongoing impacts of the pandemic upon each theme – curriculum; learning resources; learning and teaching process; assessment and feedback; student progression and achievement; guidance and support; and quality enhancement and assurance.
The resource will be included in sparqs’ Course Rep Training, so that any student rep trained by our Associate Trainers will understand the potential effects of the impact of COVID-19 on the Student Learning Experience and their role in safeguarding this experience.
As we move away from the emergency response to COVID-19, sparqs is keen to facilitate a national conversation with students on the ongoing impact of the pandemic. If you use this resource, please do get in touch with us to let us know how these conversations have gone and the issues that have surfaced that would benefit from a national conversation.
Questions have been designed with course reps in mind, but will also be useful for other elected reps such as School/Department-level reps and sabbatical officers.
For further information, or if you have any queries, please contact Megan Brown, Development Consultant – megan.brown@sparqs.ac.uk.
