Qualitatively, there’s nothing new to add to earlier posts. Sadly, despite all warnings and offers of help/support, some students still miss deadlines etc. and fall behind, and even more unfortunate are those who have fallen below accepted standards for academic integrity (e.g. plagiarism). The definition of a proposed new University PASS framework nears completion.
This is the first time anything has been added since before Christmas – and there have been no comments from SPS students at all since the blog was started. It’s therefore tempting to ‘pull the plug’ on this and walk away on the basis that there are too many other things demanding time and energy to be able to devote anything to yet another unread blog. Too negative?
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December 22nd has arrived, so the precession ofEarth means that our nights start to get shorter and our daylight hours longer – hurrah! The first teaching term of the year is over, and ‘all’ we academics still have to do is write exam papers and their marking schemes, catch up on assessing student work, get our material together for Term 2’s teaching and maybe do a little research (or at least reduce the backlog of paperwork) – oh, and enjoy the 10 days during which the University is closed over Christmas and New Year with our friends and family!
It’s also, I hope, the point at which all our new students can truly feel that they have arrived – one term ticked off, nothing is now genuinely ‘new’ in the scary or unsettling sense. It often also marks the point at which the PASS team has reached the peak in terms of the necessity of issuing informal and formal warnings etc.: let’s hope so 
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Reaching week 7 is often a bit of a watershed – we’re now closer to the end of our very long (and tiring!) Kent term than to the start, but we’ve also got to the point at which examples of the more chronic patterns of student ‘disengagement’ are beginning to emerge , take shape and receive a response. Thus, as I slip into the clutches of yet another virus (that has presumably been coughed or sneezed over me in one lecture theatre or another by one of the people who evidently regard basic hygiene as having no relevance for them in this regard) I can only reflect with sadness the fact that I have no fewer than 16 ‘disciplinary’ interviews scheduled this week. In some cases these have arisen from naivety and/or ignorance or misunderstandings and in some cases from circumstances largely or partly outside of the student’s control. however, in others there appears to be no such explanation, and the consequences are therefore easily defined. How disappointing, how sad – for us all.
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Oh dear … we’ve barely cleared week 3 of the academic year and the first case of possible plagiarism has already been brought to my attention 
If borne out, the students involved will be penalised by a loss of marks (assuming this is a first offence) – but, far more seriously, they will have sacrificed their academic integrity. Integrity is one of many aspects of a person’s character that may easily or rapidly be decreased, but which is hard to build back up via the necessary consistent effort. It’s so sad to see the chance of a short-term and usually relatively minor benefit causing long-term damage to a person’s reputation, and often motivated by nothing more than laziness.
On a more positive note, SPS hosted the termly meeting of the University’s Senior Tutor Network yesterday: room 110 was filled! We learnt that the new software we’d defined and requested many months ago has now reached the ‘beta test’ stage and that we can now have live access to it. This will help the PASS team to identify early on those students who are struggling and perhaps in need to additional support. At present, the SDS provides us with useful information regarding the non-submission of coursework; the new system will allow us to filter all sorts of additional things such as the fraction of mandatory classes missed within a defined window and how many submissions received a mark of less than 40%. Thus, we have a finer ‘grid’ available to us and ought thereby to be able more easily to spot possible trouble promptly and to be able to do something about it in conjunction with the students concerned.
During the same meeting, we set up the working group that will begin a serious review of the PAS systems available across campus in conjunction with the Kent Union (who, in their turn, will consult Course Representatives). Please make sure your constructive views are heard and represented via the course reps.: do we have a PASS in SPS that works, or perhaps you prefer a system that relies on a non-academic Student Advisor rather than on Tutors? Have your say
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It’s something that happens at this time of the year: people bring their viruses with them from all over the country (and beyond) and then share them with the rest of us. This year seems worse – but that maybe simply because I have succumbed to one of them! Anyway, the restructured PASS web pages hopefully make it easier to complete and submit an absence form should that prove necessary – not only is the form vailable, but there’s now a step-by-step guide to show you exactly what needs tobe included. The so-called Senior Tutor’s Log is about to be updated on the site as well; did you know that our student numbers have grown by ~100 since this time last year, and by ~200 since 2006/7? It’s nice to be popular, but it does mean that the PASS team has to stay very much on its toes! Take a look at the numbers … https://www.kent.ac.uk/physical-sciences/local/undergrad/support.html
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I have just spent the best part of an hour trying to explain in depth the workings of the SPS PASS system to about 200 new Foundation and Stage 1 students. I was told by a colleague afterwards that it was the scariest of all lectures; it was certainly an uncomfortable one to have to deliver. When one of our returning students (who was acting as a guide, and who knows me and my ’style’ well as a lecturer) heard this she laughed and declared me to be one of the two least scary lecturers in the place. How does one set those two statements together …?
The line I took in the Induction Lecture was the one agreed by the PASS team: we all want to see our students succeed, but we’re all too well aware of the fact that, for some students, it goes wrong in one way or another. Through me on this occasion, we were determined to provide the clearest possible warnings in the hope of helping people to avoid at least some of the pitfalls. I guess that a full-frontal description of the processes associated with a student going ‘off track’ can be scary, but I hope that the associated message concerning the many support mechanisms available – which are part of the same overall system – gives some sense of the genuine compassion that pervades what we try to accomplish. It is demonstrably true that the majority of our students never come across the ’scary’ side of things at all throughout their careers with us, and if being ’scary’ for an hour reduces the size of the minority who do then maybe it’ll have been worth the angst. Time, and our students, will have to be the judge of all this.
(For those who missed this introductory talk, or for returning students who’d like to top up their understanding of PASS as it now operates within SPS, both the slides and an associated MP3 commentary are available via our PASS pages on the SPS web site: https://www.kent.ac.uk/physical-sciences/local/undergrad/support.html)
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Whilst the preparation for ‘Week 0′ and what comes after begins to gel into something recognisable, the University-wide review of PASS begins to build up some momentum. During the previous academic year Kent was reviewed by a panel from the Quality Assurance Agency. We came out of it pretty well as a University, but the panel did leave us with a small number of recommendations – one of which was that we “revisit [our] approach to the Personal & Academic Support System in order to ensure that all students are made aware of the personal support available to them”. So, as chair of the University’s Senior Tutor Network, I have started the process of putting together the appropriate advice to the University. This morning I met with four people from the Kent Union*, and together we’re going to attempt to ensure that the student perspective on this is properly represented from ‘Day 1′ of the process. So, if/when your Course Representative asks for input do please take the time offer constructive suggestions /comments /observations
* For the record, these were Rachel Evans (Representation and Democracy Manager), Dan Carr (Representation and Postgraduate Student Coordinator), Sam Kennedy (Vice-President Welfare), Dan Curran (Vice-President Education).
By the way, if you’re in any doubt about the PASS in SPS please take a stroll through our web site: https://www.kent.ac.uk/physical-sciences/local/undergrad/support.html)
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Virtual meetings of the PASS (Personal/Pastoral and Academic Support System) team have been going on all week via e-mail, ad hoc chats in the corridor and so on: “Do we need to modify anything in light of the record number of new students, both UK and overseas?”, “What of our extensive web-based documentation – information for students, policy statements, forms and guidance – needs to be updated, and in what way?”, “How can we improve our turn-around time in respect of supporting any students who seem to be having problems?”, “Do you even remember having a summer holiday?”, “What do we need to cover in this year’s Induction Week for new students?”, … . The latter item has been made easier this year in the sense that we have managed, after a few years of trying, to get more than a token 10 minutes within the week in which to introduce the PAS system for the School of Physical Sciences. By booking a large lecture theatre in which all our Foundation/Stage 1 Physics and Forensic Science students will fit, we’ve carved out 30+ minutes. This may still sound like a short time – but we’re also mindful of the danger of ‘information overload’ during what is a very full week; you can tell us whether it’s worked once you’ve experienced it
Back to it – lots still to get done before the seats fill and the show begins!
Bob Newport.
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This is an experiment: the SPS Pass team are hoping to provide a glimpse behind the scenes of their operations on behalf of Kent’s Physics & Forensic Science students, and in turn to learn through feedback comments. As Senior Tutor, and chair of the PASS Team in SPS, I’ll try to keep you up to date with snippets of news, and perhaps a few observations, from time to time; other members of the team will contribute in a similar vein. We’d all genuinely like this to be a two-way thing – so please submit your comments to us. (All input must be moderated, according to University rules, so to be heard you’ll need to keep this fact in mind; you’ll also need to sign your comments using your Kent e-mail address. I’m hoping to keep this a fairly open blog – but there are limits!) As it happens, I’m also chair of the University’s Senior Tutor Network – so I may succumb to the temptation to let you know what’s going on across the wider landscape, especially where it’s likely to affect SPS students further down the line.
As the experiment opens, it’s still almost three weeks before Induction Week – but already our planning is being put into motion in preparation for the arrival of over ~200 new students into the department (and the return of many more students into Stage 2, 3 and 4). Indeed, the Summer period is a hive of activity across several fronts: the ‘May/June’ exams work doesn’t end for us until the latter part of July, then come the ‘A’-level results and Clearing, Resit exams (and a few Appeals) … by which time we’re well into the run-up to the start of term. When I have the time, I’ll try to pick out a few bits and pieces from the next few weeks in order to illustrate some of this 
Bob Newport (Senior Tutor, SPS)
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