Supporting UAL staff
Every course representative works directly with their course leader and programme director to enhance the learning and teaching experience of their course. The support and commitment to academic representation by UAL teaching staff is crucial for course reps to be successful in their role.
Here at Arts Students’ Union, we want to support all staff in facilitating academic representation and the student voice in their course, programme, school and college. Therefore, we have compiled a list of resources to help and guide the way.
How many course reps does my course need?
Regardless of size, each course should have a minimum of two Course Reps per year.
If you have a particularly large cohort, we suggest one course rep for every 25 students. These additional reps can be recruited at the course leader’s discretion. For foundation courses, we suggest having a minimum of two course reps per stream.
These are the numbers we suggest to try and ensure the workload is manageable for individual course reps. Having more course reps can also facilitate a greater diversity of thought and opinion reaching you and your staff team.
How to recruit course reps
To recruit course reps, we would ask that you mention the role and how it works in one of your induction sessions. We have created promotional slides for you to use which outline the role, what it entails, and how it links in with the Students’ Union. Please feel free to use them if you would like a guide for your discussion of the role.
Once you have introduced the role, we suggest giving students a week or so to put themselves forward if they are interested and then register themselves with the SU.
Once your course reps for the year are confirmed, we ask that you dedicate a few minutes of a teaching session for reps to introduce themselves to their cohort so students are clear on who is in the role and the best way for students to share feedback with them. There is also a template for this introduction, which you and reps are free to use.
Unless an overwhelming number of students put themselves forward for the role, we encourage that all those who volunteer are confirmed as course reps. If too many students do put themselves forward, we suggest you have a conversation with them to ensure they understand the scope and responsibilities of the role and that they are able to take them on.
All reps must register themselves with us by filling out the Course Rep Registration Form. Please share this link with reps once they are confirmed for your course.
So that course reps are able to attend training and receive support and information from Arts SU, they should register by:
- Wednesday 11th October 2023 for all undergraduate courses.
- Friday 20th October 2023 for all postgraduate courses.
If your course falls outside of these timelines, please get in touch, we have a team dedicated to supporting you with this task so please do reach out where needed by emailing coursereps@su.arts.ac.uk.
Why is the recruitment process important?
Course rep recruitment is very important for academic representation at UAL and we at Arts SU hugely appreciate your support with this process.
By dedicating a small amount of time in your classes to this process, you are able to make clear to students that their feedback and input is vital for a course to run well. You are also laying out what channels are available to them for this feedback.
The course rep role is also one of the most important ways students can feed back to academic staff and the Students’ Union. If you actively engage with the recruitment process, this will hopefully validate the importance of the role, and give reps the reassurance that you will continue to engage with them positively throughout the year. It also highlights the importance of the role to other students, so that they will know who to turn to if they do want to share their thoughts and experiences of the course.
Get in contact
If you want to further discuss any aspect of course rep recruitment, please don't hesitate to get in touch via coursereps@su.arts.ac.uk. There is a whole team of representation and democracy staff who would be happy to speak about the process generally, or address any specific issues regarding your cohort.