Campus News

SHAping Sustainable Futures Research Hub launch

February 7th, 2023

The Institute for Policy and Engagement is pleased to announce the upcoming launch of the SHAping Sustainable Futures Research Hub on Thursday 9 March 2023.

Developed in collaboration with the Faculty of Social Sciences, this will be an online resource dedicated to showcasing  the value of UoN Social Science research for policy around climate change, sustainability and the net zero challenge.

The rationale behind the Hub is an acknowledgement that the challenge of creating a sustainable future is as much a social challenge as a technical one.

This new Hub collates relevant research from across the Faculty of Social Sciences, and related disciplines, presenting them in a systematic format that is designed to be accessible for policy audiences.

It will provide a sustainable ongoing home for impact in this area, supporting our social science research and researchers to impact upon policy makers and the public.

This internal launch event is an opportunity for interested members of the university to learn more about the Hub, the research it features, and ongoing plans for the Hub and the wider university in this area.

It will be followed by a wine reception and small buffet to give interested parties a chance to network and discuss potential future collaborations in this area.

Please note that this event is primarily aimed at UoN staff working in this area who may wish to use the Hub, either to learn about current research or to promote their own work. The event is held in the evening to enable colleagues with teaching commitments to attend.

If you are not a member of staff and would like to attend, or have research partners you would like to bring, please contact the institute.

Date: Thursday 9 March, from 4.30pm-6pm, followed by a wine reception and networking opportunity.
Location: Senate Chamber, Trent Building, University Park, NG7 2RD

Please click here for further information and to register for the event.

Programme:

Welcome: Stephen Meek (Director of the Institute for Policy and Engagement)
Introduction to the Hub: Gabrielle Bunn (Hub Project Coordinator)
Short talks by a variety of key stakeholders working in this area from across the university
Presentations on two featured projects
Wine reception and networking opportunity to follow

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Are your university details up to date?

February 6th, 2023

Thankfully, emergencies on campus are rare. But to ensure we’re prepared for any eventuality, we’re asking that all our staff and students update their university record with their contact details and those of their emergency contacts.

This includes your contact information, emergency contact details and next of kin information.

Having up-to-date information is crucial in the event of an emergency, making sure we can contact you or your designated next of kin quickly and effectively during or after an incident on campus.

To update your details, simply log into MyView, click My Details on the left-hand navigation pane and proceed to check and/or update as needed.

It should take no longer than 10 minutes and will mean we’re getting in touch with the right people at the right time.

You can find help on logging into and using MyView including resetting your password and security questions, here. If you do encounter any technical difficulties, please contact the IT Service Desk for help.

We recommend checking your details are up to date once a year to make sure all information remains correct.

We’ll be contacting students later in the academic year to request they do the same and we will provide detailed instructions on how they can do this.

We appreciate your co-operation in keeping your information current. By doing so, you are helping to ensure the safety and security of our university community.

As part of our ongoing resilience planning, the Operational Resilience Team will be carrying out a test of the Emergency Notification System using the mobile contact numbers provided later in the year.

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The National Student Survey – call for support

February 3rd, 2023

The National Student Survey (NSS) is now open for final-year undergraduate students.

The NSS was established in 2005 and is a census of nearly half a million students across the UK. It enables the university and the University of Nottingham Students’ Union to understand what we’re getting right and what we need to improve.

The survey is a great way for final-year undergraduates to provide honest feedback on various aspects of  university life, including teaching, wellbeing, assessments, academic support, learning resources, the student voice and overall satisfaction.

Students will have been sent a direct link to the survey from Ipsos to their university email account. Alternatively, they can complete the survey at any time by visiting the NSS website and entering their student ID number. The deadline for completing the NSS is Sunday 30 April.

You can support the survey by encouraging students to get involved. This will help to maximise the number of responses and can help us make changes to our teaching, resources, facilities and the student experience here at UoN.

Various promotional resources are available in the below link, including lecture slides, images for social media posts and more.

Promotional resources for staff

All responses to the NSS are anonymised and those who complete the survey online will get a chance to win one of three £500 Love2shop vouchers.

Thank you for your support.

Read the terms and conditions for the prize draw

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Fancy learning Mandarin?

February 3rd, 2023

The Nottingham Confucius Institute is offering you a free three-week taster course, available in person and online.

This course will introduce you to basic Mandarin, its scripts and sounds, and how words are formed. It will also give you an insight into Chinese society and culture. The course assumes no previous experience of speaking Chinese.

Classes are offered both in-person and online for three consecutive weeks on the following dates:
In-person:
Wednesday 8, 15 and 22 March, 5.15-6pm
Online:
Wednesday 8, 15 and 22 March, 12.30-1.15pm

To register or find out more, please visit the Nottingham Confucius Institute webpage.

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Continuing to support student engagement with the Student Engagement Dashboard

February 2nd, 2023

At the start of academic year 22/23 the Teaching and Learning Committee introduced new operating guidelines for supporting student engagement and using the Student Engagement Dashboard.

As a reminder, the Student Engagement Dashboard is a tool to support student wellbeing, for which engagement is a key indicator.

It allows us to identify when students’ participation in learning has dropped or is at a level that may cause concern about their progress and wellbeing. It therefore supports retention and success, as well as enabling the university to meet UK Visa and Immigration sponsor requirements.    

All staff should now be familiar with the agreed operating guidelines for engagement and the key headlines:

  • All academic units must use the Student Engagement Dashboard.   
  • The university baseline for an intervention is two weeks of zero engagement without an appropriate documented reason.  
  • Within each academic unit, senior tutors are the academic leads for the dashboard, with heads of school responsible for ensuring roles are appropriately resourced.  
  • All schools must use the official university QR code system for capturing attendance at in-person teaching sessions with schools giving students opportunity to achieve a minimum of two scans per week. 

The Student Engagement Dashboard now includes a ‘Personal Tutor View’ and functionality to enable relevant staff to record contact and interventions with students. It is important that interactions with students are recorded to ensure other teams are aware of the latest developments, enabling our activity to be joined up. Staff training on these new elements was delivered in October 2022.    

Pastoral process

The operating guidelines detail a step-by-step intervention process for contacting a disengaged student. They describe the process flow for contact – broken into the ‘Academic Unit stage’ and the ‘Support and Wellbeing stage’. Timescales have been included to ensure that we are responding in a timely manner to a student who has disengaged from their study.  

To support academic units in contacting students where initial attempts are not successful, a new Student Engagement Dashboard Manager has been appointed in the Student and Campus Life team. Contact details are available in the operating guidelines linked above. 

Permitted periods of approved absence

The Quality Manual states that a permitted period of absence should not normally exceed 2 weeks and that where absences exceed permitted periods, the school may require the student to interrupt their studies and return at a specified time in the future that will enable the student to resume the programme appropriately.

Please remind students that they are required to attend and academically engage for the full duration of teaching during term-time and that for masters students, term-time includes the summer dissertation period.

QR code scan data indicates that rates of in-person attendance decreases in the weeks prior to university vacation periods. For students in the UK on student visas, it is an expectation of UK Visas and Immigration (UKVI) that students are attending and engaging with their studies in the UK throughout the term-time period applicable to that particular course. 

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£1m funding available to support research culture: share your ideas

January 31st, 2023

The University of Nottingham has been invited to apply for up to £1m funding from the Wellcome Trust to support its ambition to build a positive and inclusive culture for the delivery of research.

The Wellcome Trust has invited 42 universities, including Nottingham, to apply for up to £1m over two years through its Institutional Funding for Research Culture scheme.

Nottingham is inviting colleagues from all job families to submit ideas to inform its application. Please note: this is not a funding call for individual research projects but for proposals that will help shape the university’s institutional application.

Areas that the funding could support include:

  • Improving access to research careers for under-represented groups
  • Approaches to creating an inclusive and supportive environment for research staff
  • Innovative approaches to team science (research involving two or more research groups)
  • Developing and furthering open research practices that support positive research cultures
  • Approaches to embedding non-research staff (for example technicians and professional service staff) as valuable members of research communities
  • Exploring new approaches to management and leadership skills training for researchers

Find out more about Institutional Funding for Research Culture scheme

The deadline for documentation to support internal proposals is noon, Friday 3 March 2023.

Please contact adam.golberg@nottingham.ac.uk (cc bb-rkedevelopment@nottingham.ac.uk) if you intend to apply, with a brief summary.

Register for the Wellcome Trust webinar

Further information

Wellcome: Institutional Funding for Research Culture

Discussion on research culture from Wellcome

You can also find out more about the university’s research culture project, which is inviting colleagues from all job families to help build a positive research culture and environment, where everyone who carries out or supports research can achieve their very best.

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Learning technology tools for engaging students: webinars

January 31st, 2023

A new iTeach Webinar series (Engaging students with…) has been announced focusing on learning technology tools for engaging students. See below for dates in January and February.

Activities that will be covered include Echo360, Moodle Choice and Quiz, MS Forms and Polls, Xerte and H5P.

Participants are invited to experience each activity as though they are a student, followed by an optional hands-on session to try out anything they have seen.

The iTeach series of webinars are brought to you by Learning Technologies in collaboration with Cecilia Goria (Arts Digital Learning Director). ​​​​​​​

Each session will be introduced by Cecilia Goria who will provide insights into the pedagogy for the techniques that will be demonstrated and what students have told us about their experiences of taking part.

Full series and booking links:

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Resources and recognition for personal tutors

January 31st, 2023

The university has joined UK Advising and Tutoring (UKAT) as part of a move to recognise the vital role of personal tutors at the institution.

UKAT offers accreditation of practice, conferences, professional courses, symposia, workshops, support for original research, and peer-reviewed academic publications.

These resources will now be available to personal tutors at the University of Nottingham.

UKAT aims to lead the development and dissemination of innovative theory, research, and practice of student advising and tutoring in the UK and beyond.

They encourage practitioners to engage with the scholarship of personal tutoring and to adopt a scholarly-informed approach to their practice.

If you have any questions, please contact Andy Fisher, University Senior Tutor.

Further information, including how to apply for accreditation, will be circulated shortly.

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Change to Microsoft Teams recordings: action required for users

January 31st, 2023

Microsoft are discontinuing the application known as “Classic Stream” later in 2023 – the system where all Microsoft Teams recordings were stored prior to July 2022.

The university therefore needs to prepare for the replacement of Classic Stream in Office 365, and we need your help to get your recordings ready for the migration. We cannot do this for you, as these are your own recordings.

These are the steps we need you to take:

Step one: Remove unnecessary legacy videos from Classic Stream

Removing unnecessary videos reduces the amount of video the university needs to migrate and helps avoid a build-up of junk content in your OneDrive and/or Teams.

It is vital that you delete all unwanted video content before Wednesday 1 March 2023, or your OneDrive or Teams will be populated with the unwanted recordings.

Please ensure that any unpublished video is deleted or published. Likewise, if you have any broken video content, please remove that as well.

If you are unsure what recordings you have, you can find a list of your video content via this link. To delete the recordings you do not need, click the three dots to access the delete option.

While tidying up, you may wish to rename the video to have a title that is more meaningful to you and any viewers. This is optional, but may help you later.

Don’t worry if you make a mistake, as deleted videos can be recovered from Classic Stream’s recycle bin for up to 30 days, should you need to restore any.

Step two: Check Classic Stream video sharing

If you have shared any of your videos in Classic Stream and they are set to ‘company wide’, please take this opportunity to amend so that only the correct people can access the videos for privacy and data protection reasons.

See the link on how to share to the correct university security groups and Teams.

Moving forward

For staff, following the Wednesday 1 March 2023 deadline, video in Stream Classic will be migrated into OneDrive and/or Teams, deleting the original and keeping the new copy in M365.

After migration, Teaching staff should ensure any lecture related content is then transferred into Echo after the deadline. Further instructions will follow nearer the time.

For undergraduates, post-graduates, and Associates, data will not be migrated, and you should download then upload any video content you wish to keep.

Microsoft have confirmed a hard deadline of October 2023, after which point unmigrated video content will become unavailable.

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PVC EDI Blog: Celebrating LGBT+ History Month 2023

January 31st, 2023

Professor Katherine Linehan looks ahead to LGBT+ History Month, further support and action for our LGBTQIA+ community, and the University decision to renew its membership of the Stonewall Diversity Champions programme.

Read the full blog here.

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