Class Reps 🤓

Class Representatives are elected by their class mates to represent their voice within the university, they work with the Students Association and the univeristy to solve issues and put forward ideas.

They have the opportunity to enhance positive aspects of a programme and can highlight problems within a programme and help work towards a solution.

You've been elected, now what?

Now that you’ve been elected, here are a few things you should consider doing to set up good channels for communication with your class.

1. Introduce yourself, in person (best done at the end of a class)
2. Send out an email to your class/students introducing you as class rep
3. Set up a Facebook page or group for your class and make sure everyone joins

Ongoing communications

• Email/message your class regularly for any issues
• Be open to being approached on a face to face basis
• Forward any issues to Division/Community reps prior to the next Student Representative Council meeting

Committment

As a class rep you are expected to meet the following commitments:

1. Student Fora - 1 hour per semester
2. Informative get-togethers (Voluntary) - 1 hour per month
3. Training - Introductory online module (approx. 1 hour, in your own time) and a 2 hour online workshop
4. Contact with classmates - approx. 15 minutes per week

Success stories

We’re very proud of our Class Representatives, and they are also proud of their achievements. Here are a few sucess stories from Class Reps that will hopefully inspire you in the coming year.

"One of the main things I was able to do was speak to the tutors for certain modules and ask them if they could supply slides for lectures the day before where at all possible.

I was able to act as a go between to ask questions where students were too embarrassed to ask themselves or were worried about badgering tutors, whereas I could anonymise it and say ‘some students have approached me".

"A couple of students struggled with illness or family troubles so I gave them the options and the differences between a 24h extension and the process of gaining a longer one.

For that I spoke to SEZ and arranged for the student to come in and speak to them. I also directed them to student advisory service who are amazing."

"A lot of the class felt that one of the deadlines for one of the class modules was too early in the term and didn't give students enough time to properly complete the coursework.

We brought this up with the lecturer, and arranged a meeting with both the lecturer and the head of department to discuss class concerns and negotiate potential solutions. Both the lecturer and the department head were very open to hearing class feedback and took what we said on board, and were happy to push the deadline back a week to give students more time to work on it.

This was really well received by the class as it meant students had enough time to really work on the coursework and get it fully completed. The lecturer and department head were also really glad to have been made aware of an issue affecting student work and were open for a discussion on how the situation could be improved."

"Myself and our other class rep have been able to raise issues regarding one of our core modules and it’s appropriateness.

I’ve tried to encourage students to fill in the feedback forms and they are actually changing the structure of the modules next year. It was originally cognitive psychology and research methods and social psychology and now (I think) they are going to combine the cognitive and social elements and teach research methods as a separate module because students found it really challenging in its current format.

After speaking to the tutors and discussing the structure of the module discovered they didn’t particularly like teaching it that way either so everyone’s happy I think."

"On one of our modules there was a lot of mixed messages around a piece of coursework and one student was really unhappy with her grade/feedback. She would have accepted it if they could justify why it got the grade it got but didn’t feel it was fair.

I anonymously raised this for her with the module head who read it a few times and while she agreed that the feedback on the essay was accurate she felt that the mark was a bit harsh as she had understood the references and has increased the grade, however it is still be to reviewed by the board."

“I’m pleased with some of the stuff I’ve achieved and glad I could help student who were sometimes quite distressed.

I should have made more of an effort to contact the year group as a whole as a lot of my work was with the direct entries but I’m going to set up a year group Facebook page and email them to let them know I’m around over the summer if they have any problems.”