To the Ni601 module team,

There have been significant issues in the Ni601 leadership module for the September 11 cohort across multiple campuses, which has led us to feel the need to express our concerns with the hope of remedial action.

The lectures are far too short when compared with the amount of material planned in the presentations; it’s in as if most lecturers are planning a two hour lecture but were only given one hour. This is compounded with time consistently being wasted in lectures by questionnaires or videos which could have been completed at home. Further more the amount of direct contact time does not reflect the 20 credit value of the module.

The material being taught is seldom put into context of real life, making it difficult to see how it informs our practice or how we apply it to an examined scenario. Too often the content is a reading of the powerpoint presentation which isn’t an appropriate use of direct contact time.

East side students have encountered poor organisation of sessions where timetable changes were made without any announcements nor an update of the published timetable, which compromise the student’s ability to pre-read and understand the content. The lecturers are often at a loss to explain aspects of the module, they clearly need more support. The latest module handbook has also not been uploaded to the standard location in student central.

The professionalism of the module has been compromised by lecturers having arguments on fundamental content in front of the students in lectures, additionally electronic communication to students has been unprofessional at times. Unfortunately the most common response to any raising of issues was to direct students to put it in the end-of-module feedback. Although we acknowledge our responsibility to inform the university staff to improve education for our fellow students, it does not reflect the university’s responsibility to ensure September 11’s education is of a suitable standard. We have completed the module feedback forms for the module and hope they are helpful in improving the module. Common themes will include the need for longer lectures and improved coordination amongst the team on lecture organisation and the specifics of the exam format (confusion about which is rife due to different information being distributed by different staff members, which also conflicts with the instructions on the exam scenario itself).

The module has great potential to aid us in developing our leadership abilities, being signposted to the excellent online materials is useful. The exam preparation session proved how applying the theory to a real life scenario actually made understanding the taught material far easier; an understanding that should have permeated the entire module. Each session needs to use these kinds of scenarios to put the theories into context.

Remedial action at this point in the module is problematic, however we hope you take our concerns into account. Possible actions could be to run extra sessions (particularly in smaller groups) or even to prevent any second attempts at the exam being capped at 40%.

We understand that our BSc is a new course and there are bound to be teething issues, however we hope you understand our need to raise these concerns.

Regards

The September 11 Cohort