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Resources for Directors
of Studies
Notes for 2nd year DoSs - 2011/12 version |
Summary
Last year you will have battled through much of what you need
to learn to be a DoS. You should be familiar with EUCLID,
TimeTab, DPTs, etc, as well as all of the pastoral issues of a
DoS. This page is designed to highlight the new information
that you will need this year. In particular:
- it focuses on how
to deal with continuing students (in the standard DoS model for
Physics and Astronomy you will probably have directed only
Freshers last year, so have not yet encountered this)
- it details
significant changes since last year
- it collects together the
key documents that you will need in Freshers' week (many of which
have minor updates since last year).
If you need a recap on the general processes of being a DoS, then
please see the notes
for new DoSs.
| Actions before Freshers' week
You should make sure that you are still fully up-to-speed with
how to do key tasks in EUCLID,
such as enrolling and de-enrolling students from courses - if
you need it, there is on-line training material
here
and
here.
It is probably worth learning how to
use BOXI (available within MyEd) -
although you can get by without this, by doing things less
efficiently in EUCLID. I've set up some standard DoS queries
that should cover all of your early needs, which are available on the
school maintained pages.
For continuing students, before
Freshers' Week you need to check that they have passed all of
their courses the previous year, and that they are eligible to
progress (this can be done student-by-student in EUCLID, but some
of the DoS queries I've made in BOXI may be more efficient for this).
- In order to be considered to be making "adequate progress", a
student must have passed all of their required credits, ie:
- 120 credit points by the end of Year 1
- 240 credit points by the end of Year 2
- 360 credit points by the end of Year 3
- 480 credit points by the end of Year 4
If a student has not reached this level after the resit exams
then they do not have an automatic right to continue study at the
University. See the
College's
guidelines on this.
- If a student is in this situation then you need to fill in
a "FAP" (failure to make adequate progress) form
(Word
version;
PDF
version) and send it to Teaching Office.
- If you are eligible to decide on their progression (ie. the
student is short of credits for the first time, is within 20
credits of what they should have achieved, and is missing no
core courses) then please do so; in this case the FAP form can
be sent to Teaching Office after you've interviewed the student
and decided on the best course of action.
- In all other circumstances the student will need to be
interviewed (by DoT) during Freshers' Week - for such students
make sure that you get the FAP forms to
Teaching Office as soon as possible (before Freshers'
week).
- If a student has failed courses, but they have been given
permission to continue study (by yourself or DoT), then the
course of action depends on their circumstances:
- if the student is are able to be granted appropriate
concessions (see
concessions
guidelines) then they can continue to the following year
while resitting the failed courses (or alternative courses to
make up the credits if these were outside option courses).
- it may be possible/appropriate for the resat courses to be
taken in exam-only mode.
- if the student has failed more courses, or key courses
like Phys 1A/1B/2A/2B, then they will have to retake the year
(or part of it) to pass these before progressing to the next
year.
- they can do this full-time (sitting extra courses to get "credits
in the bank") or part-time if they prefer.
The DoS
Summary Notes document gives details of how you should
handle all of these cases. Guidance on what to do if a student
reaches the maximum attempt limit on a course is available in
the FAQs
(Q19).
- Here are the
College
forms for Failure to make Adequate Progress (FAP),
concessions, exam-only study, interruptions of study, etc.
In most cases you will also be allocated some
new Freshers in your second year of being a DoS. As last
year, myself or Teaching office will send you a list of students allocated to
you, before Freshers' week. It's worth going into EUCLID and
assigning yourself as their Director of Studies before they
turn up. I also download the photos and print out a rogues'
gallery, to help me to remember them.
Freshers' will be
informed of who their DoS is, and where that DoS's office is,
during their induction meeting on the Tuesday morning of
Freshers' week. They'll start trying to come and see you from
about lunchtime that day.
Remember that you'll need to decide a way to arrange
start-of-year interviews (see
the FAQs,
question 2 for a reminder of options on how to do this): you
should contact continuing students before Freshers' week about
how they do this, and make sure there's instructions or a
sign-up sheet on your door in Freshers' week for the Freshers.
| Key documents and changes
- As always, the
DoS
Summary Notes is the most important document, detailing
things that you should discuss with students of each year in
the Freshers' week meeting.
- A list of significant changes to courses or the curriculum
since last year can be found here.
- Here are up-to-date guidelines for
choice of pre-honours maths courses.
- Here's the up-to-date list of suggested
outside
course choices for pre-honours students (includes
requirements to satisfy other DPTs to keep open option of
degree changes, listings of pre-requisites, and details of
clashes with standard compulsary courses).
| Other useful forms and
documents
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