UCB Staff: Making the most of Course Reps

We want UCB to be a place all students have a voice and are heard on the right issues, and we know how valuable student voice is to Academic Teams.
To help us help you, we’ve gotten together some Troubleshooting and FAQs to help you make the most of your Course Reps:

Signing Up Course Reps

FE students:

We aim for every FE class group to have a Rep, and many classes won’t have an abundance of students desperate to put themselves forward – what works well in many cases is for the lecturer to support their class to elect a Rep for that class to be (willingly) registered.

With that in mind, should a situation occur where a keen student is not picked as their classes’ Rep, we encourage you to register more than one Rep. While we aim for a minimum of one student per class group, we do not feel there needs to be a maximum number of students if they are genuinely keen to engage.

To be registered with us, FE students must be registered with us via Promonitor – please ensure that they are flagged in ProMonitor using the Learner Badges section in the SUPPORT > Risk Indicators page (you will need to unlock the page by clicking the blue banner at the top, first).

Select ‘Student Rep’ from the Learner Badges: drop-down and click the Save button.

If you want to check that the Student Rep Learner Badge (purple with a gold crown) has been added successfully, simply refresh the browser and the new badge icon should appear next to the Student’s ID photo (top right):

If you’re having any issues with adding the Rep badges, please contact Nadine Growcock.

This list from ProMonitor needs to then be manually imported to The Guild’s database to allow Reps to access training and communicates, which we do regularly but cannot be instantaneous.

NOTE: students will only be considered full Course Reps upon completing their training. Reps must be re-registered every academic year to ensure their training is up-to-date.

HE students:

HE students register themselves, and there is no maximum number of students per class cohort or course. They register via our website by navigating to our Course Rep Hub where they may be prompted to sign in using the UCB single sign-in if they have not signed in automatically. from here the click “self-guided” in the dropdown menu, and click “register your interest” – this will add them directly to our Guild database and a Rep trainee.

NOTE: students will only be considered full Course Reps upon completing their training. Reps must re-register every academic year to ensure their training is up-to-date.

Who Are My Reps?

we are currently developing a “Find My Reps” webtool to make our Rep database searchable by the named staff member for a given course, to give you an up-to-date list of all Reps who have registered interest with us. Our named staff members will be able to log into our website in our Course Rep Hub and view a filtered list of all of their Reps that pulls directly from our most up to date records available.

Until then, please email CourseReps@UCBguild.co.uk and we will run a manual search for you at the first available opportunity, or register for the webtool for your account.

We also will be appointing 7 Lead Reps, one for each school, who The Guild pay to centralise feedback and assist with making sure our Student Voice systems reach and involve as many students as possible.

How Do Reps Access Their Training?

Reps access their training on the “UCB Student Guild Course Reps” Canvas page.
We procedurally invite students registered as interested, however a student must accept the invite to the canvas page in order to see notifications and training resources.

Starting from the 26/27 academic year, students who have not completed their training modules will not yet be considered Reps as we experience a percentage of students register interest but not engaging with training. We also are aware of a proportion of students who are named by academics as a Rep and invited to meetings, but are never registered with The Guild and therefore have no access to the correct training or support in their role, and miss out on all the other opportunities we offer Reps.

What should I be doing as a staff member?

We encourage staff to support their Course Reps to be active participants in your approach to student voice, and by extension allow The Guild to collaborate to support a robust approach to student voice.

You can do this by:

• Giving us notice of when your Subject Boards are – you can do this either by submitting the relevant information in this form, or by sending a direct outlook calendar invite to CourseReps@UCBguild.co.uk. We ask for at least 10 working days notice whenever possible to arrange for a member of the Guild team to attend or for updates from us to be sent.
  
• Ensure all Reps you know of are registered with us! We cannot train or support students we do not know of, and students who have not completed their training are not formally recognised as Reps. Reps must re-register every academic year.
  
• Make sure you’re sharing the correct information with students – We have a Frequent Misconceptions section below, so please check to see if any of these apply to you!
  
• Work with your Course Reps to help run mid-module/end of module feedback – where you have a Course Rep in your class who is able to, asking them to assist you in getting the class to respond to reviews. We have had great feedback about the quality of feedback lecturers have gotten by allowing Reps to go round their class to collect the feedback for a module review, and students have told us that sometimes they feel hesitant to give honest constructive feedback directly to lecturers.
  
  One way we have tried to support capturing is by creating a template review form that you and your Course Reps can use to streamline the process – simply open this form with your staff UCB log-in on your whiteboard, have your Reps enter the classes feedback, and we will email you the responses.
  
  Alternatively, you can ask a Course Rep to ask the questions of their classmates and fill out the form themselves (we’d recommend allotting a bit of class time to do this if possible) and we will email the responses to the class lead identified in the form.
  
  You can access this form here: Mid-module/End of Module feedback template
  

How Should I Be Involving Reps?

Beyond ensuring The Guild and your Course Reps are aware of when your subject boards are, Reps are also a useful tool to academic teams. We encourage staff to approach their Reps with opportunities relevant to your course, whether this is for them to participate or aiding in connecting their peers to an opportunity.

As champions of student voice, we hope you will allow Reps to support you in the conducting you module reviews, either by aiding to co-ordinating their classmates to respond in an anonymous manner, or gaining their perspective when interpreting and actioning the feedback you receive.
Equally, if you have an update to share about changes you are able to make in actioning student feedback, our Course Reps are a great way to spread the good news!

How To Invite Reps To A Meeting

If you send a calendar invite to CourseReps@UCBguild.co.uk it will be added to the Course Rep canvas calendar – we aim to do this within three working days where possible. Please include in this calendar invite all necessary information such as location, purpose of meeting, and what course the meeting is for.

Alternatively, staff with access to the “Find My Reps” webtool are welcomed to email their Reps directly, but are welcomed to include CourseReps@UCBguild.co.uk if there is any areas where you feel The Guild can support.

About The ‘Lead Rep’ Programme

The Guild have allocated budget to pay one Rep per academic school for 3 hours a week as a ‘Lead Rep’, whose role is to aid in streamlining contact between Reps within a school and The Guild, deepening our insights on student experience and voice on a more departmental level. Workload is assigned and managed solely by The Guild, however course and department leaders are more than encouraged to approach Lead Reps to collaborate in their work.

If there is a project you would like Lead Reps to assist in an element of, please contact Mike Towl to organise aligning this within our Lead Reps’ workload.

Frequent Misconceptions

“we MUST hold a vote to appoint Course Reps” voting can be a useful tool to empower students to represent their class – especially in FE – however, it is not always necessary if that isn’t the most effective route for your class. Staff should not ‘appoint’ Reps in their class as this can alienate other students who may be keen to engage.

Should you have a situation where multiple students are eager to participate, then they should be encouraged to. It may be productive to come to a class consensus on which student would be the main rep contact for logistical purposes, but we find supporting reps in this situation to collaborate can be incredibly beneficial both for themselves and their class.

“There can be only ONE Rep per class” this is untrue. We’d truly love for every class of every course have at least one trained Rep, however we’ve worked hard to make sure our Rep programme can serve as a professional development opportunity – one which we’d like any interested student to feel welcome to access should they wish.

“Course Reps will tell The Guild _ so I don’t need to” – not necessarily. Whether it’s what’s discussed in a module meeting, feeding back that issues raised by students have been actioned, or an idea that we may be able to help make happen – just because it seems logical for students to tell us, it doesn’t mean it necessarily makes it back to us.
We know a large part of the student membership aren’t aware of the kinds of things a Students’ Union does, and while we endeavour to shout about what we do, we often need the help of staff who see them every day to keep us on their radar.
If there’s anything that you feel should make it back to us so we can support on – either prompt your Rep to tell us directly, or drop us an email and copy the Rep in and we can take it from there.
We want our Rep programme to help students build the skills to take the initiative, but sometimes something as simple as trying to figure out which email to contact us on, or recalling what is covered in their induction training when students are already juggling multiple priorities can be a point of friction that a gently nudge can help them overcome.

Where should I contact for general questions not answered here?

CourseReps@ucbguild.co.uk.