Tuesday 10-11-2020 - 16:36

Over the last few weeks and months, we have listened to your thoughts on how your education should look through the changes caused by Covid-19. We've taken your thoughts and added our own to create a vision of how we believe education needs to look in the coming months.  

We'll be taking this stance to SU Assembly on 26 November for discussion with student representatives, but with recent government announcements and their impact on the HE sector as a whole, we wanted to share our position with students as soon as possible. We will be working with the University Executive, as well as through academic representatives, committees and groups, to accomplish these goals.

Ensuring choice and flexibilty

We believe that blended learning should continue, but with a greater focus on student choice and flexibility. You should have the option to learn online, or in a face to face setting, as far as students and staff feel safe, and the University should work towards that goal. But we're clear that face to face teaching is primarily about learning, and doesn’t remove the need for mental health support, or wider student experience, like sports or societies.

The University needs to address ongoing issues of digital poverty, to make sure that all students have equal and fair access to their education. The University should also ensure that study spaces are open and safe for students to use, as well as increasing its efforts to make course material more accessible to all students. An important part of the learning process takes place outside of formal spaces and Durham SU will continue to support academic societies in providing these informal spaces to support students with their learning and development.

Standing up for postgraduates

Postgraduate research students have had their learning severely interrupted by Covid and the University needs to consider how best to support these students directly in their work, to make sure that they are not negatively impacted by further knock on effects resulting from this or the last lockdown. Postgraduate researchers who teach should continue to be properly trained, supported and paid where they are involved in teaching and academic support work.

All students should have the chance to succeed

There also needs to be a change to exams and mitigations. Students should receive timely feedback, in order to learn from feedback and improve on that performance in further assessments.

Last year, we successfully lobbied the University to put Serious Adverse Circumstances forms and self-certification of absence forms online. We’re aware that this wasn't made very clear to students, and so we're asking that the University communicates this widely, so that you know what to do if you need that help.

The University successfully put in place several mitigations for all students last year, and we are asking that they continue those for this academic year. These should include an automatic one-week extension, when asked for by students, as well as the re-introduction of the No Detriment policy for both undergraduate and postgraduate taught students, similar to that of academic year 2019-20. These mitigations should of course be applied fairly and consistently across all departments in the University. This is to ensure that all students have the same ability to succeed this year. We understand that blanket mitigations don’t always go far enough in certain circumstances – and in those cases, they will not negatively impact those who already have mitigations agreed, but instead add to them.

Looking after staff  

We also realise that the University has a duty to ensure the health and safety of staff, and this must extend to greater consideration of increased workloads during Covid restrictions. There needs to be more communication between and within academic departments both for students and staff, so that everyone is clear about the expectations relating to their education.