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1. Upcoming Deadlines
1st November: Common Awards Management Board
4th November: Deadline for TEIs to submit campus card photographs (for further information on photograph formatting, please see the following page: Campus Cards - Durham University)
25th November: Deadline - TEIs to submit Annual Self-Evaluation Documentation
48 hours after TEI Board of Examiners - TEIs to submit all completing student module marks considered at the TEI Board of Examiners (if applicable)
1st December: Deadline: TEIs to submit changes of registration (to be captured in the Census)
1st December: Census Date : TEIs to submit Moodle census snapshot report
1st December: DU Overarching Board of Examiners (Winter)
Early December: TEIs asked to circulate information on the Common Awards Management Board (CAMB) Student Representative nomination/election process.
TEIs are reminded to submit concession requests and change of registration forms on an ongoing basis.
2. Winter Congregation 2023
Students
Students eligible for graduation (those who have successfully completed the BA, MA, Postgraduate Diploma or Postgraduate Certificate) should now have been invited to attend the graduation ceremony at 10am on 5th January 2023, at Durham Cathedral. Registration closes on 9th December 2022.
TEI Staff
Members of staff in TEIs are also welcome to attend the Common Awards graduation ceremony; the staff attendance registration form is available at the following link: https://forms.office.com/r/LX1GrkY3Rn. Registration closes on 9th December 2022.
Academic Procession
Members of staff in TEIs who hold an undergraduate degree are eligible to participate in the academic procession for the Common Awards students. If you are interested in this please indicate on the staff attendance registration form.
Common Awards Celebration Event
St John’s College, which incorporates Cranmer Hall, has very kindly offered to host a Celebration Event following the graduation ceremonies at Durham Cathedral. St John’s College, Durham University, is a 5-minute walk from the Cathedral where the ceremonies will be held.
The event will allow students to meet with representatives from the Common Awards Team and the Ministry Development Team, whilst also celebrating the graduating students from all TEIs.
There will be drinks and canapés for students and staff. Students and staff can register their attendance via the registration process.
3. Invoices and Census
Census
TEIs are asked to follow the below process in preparation for the 2022/23 census:
1. Please continue to send the Common Awards Team Changes of Registration by the 1st December, and make sure these changes are actioned in Moodle.
2. On 1st December, please download the Moodle census snapshot report, and send to the Common Awards Team. Full details are available in the CA Marks Processing Booklet, Appendix 24. If you are not expecting to be at work on the 1st, please send it to us beforehand, or as close as possible to the 1st.
We will then run the checking processes against our Banner data. We will work on the assumption that the Moodle data in your snapshot is correct, but will liaise with you over any discrepancies until the final numbers have been confirmed with you. You will not be charged for any students who are DM or WD on 1st December according to your Moodle snapshot, and we will honour all changes sent to us before 1st December. In the unlikely event that a student is correctly DM or WD in Banner on 1st December, but incorrectly RE in Moodle, you will be given the opportunity to correct this in Moodle and resend the report. Students completing at our December overarching Board will be made SC in Banner after 1st December, and these students will not be included in the census.
Any new registration changes sent to us after 1st December won’t be actioned until the census numbers are finalised.
As per the Standard Validation Contract, the University intends to increase the validation and per capita student fees in line with inflation. We will confirm with TEIs the rate of inflation in due course.
4. APL and Module Registration
TEIs are reminded to please send us the additional reports from Moodle for Module Registration. These reports are entitled, ‘V4 – Module Enrolment (programme name) all’ and should be downloaded and sent to us as .html files. Please use ‘ZendTo’ to share these documents securely with the Common Awards Team.
When submitting APL credits, TEIs are also asked to submit approval documentation relating to the APL application. Please do this for approvals at TEI and University level. Please be advised that this request is not adding an additional approval process where TEIs have already approved APL claims within the parameters set. Further information on the process for submitting this data is available on the APL registration page and Module Registration page.
5. Board of Examiner Submissions
The next Overarching Board of Examiners is due to be held on 1st December 2022.
Please note that the Team will be working to tight timescales for this Board. We therefore wish to remind TEIs that it is absolutely paramount that TEIs submit completing student modules marks 48 hours after they have been considered at their TEI Board of Examiners. Please do send these earlier if you are to do so.
TEIs are asked to ensure that all appropriate checks on the data are undertaken before sharing the data with the Common Awards Team to reduce the number of queries. It is also important that a staff member with full knowledge of the students’ records is available at the TEI in the weeks following the board, to resolve any queries.
TEIs are reminded that Boards of Examiners must ensure that the following is submitted to Durham in line with the deadlines in published guidance and the Common Awards Calendar:
Further information on the documents TEIs must submit following their Board of Examiners is available here.
6. ASE Documentation
As in previous years we will schedule individual virtual meetings with TEIs in the Spring to discuss and reflect on the information provided in Annual Self-Evaluation submissions. These meetings will either be chaired by Prof Higton, Dr. Selina Stone or Dr. Frances Clemson, and this year will include a strong focus on the response to From Lament to Action. Following discussions with the Ministry Development Team , it has also been agreed that a member of the Ministry team will also attend these meetings where the TEI trains Church of England ministers, to provide a more co-ordinated response to ASE submissions. If you feel it is more appropriate for your TEI to have two separate meetings then please let us know when we begin to arrange meetings.
The Common Awards Team will be in touch to organise a convenient time for these meetings following TEI submissions of ASEs.
The deadline for the submissions of Annual Self Evaluation forms is 25th November. You can find the most recent version of the forms on our Templates and Forms webpage. Please submit sections A and B to David Hanson in the Ministry Development Team.
7. TEI BoE and CAMC
TEIs are reminded to forward dates of their TEI Management Committees and Boards of Examiners meetings for 2022-23 to the Common Awards Team at their earliest convenience.
We would also like to remind TEIs to send TEI Boards of Examiners Membership Lists at their earliest convenience.
8. Staff Development
This programme provides participants with the opportunity to work through interactive online content in their own time, to discuss their learning with colleagues across the UK and with facilitators from Durham University’s Centre for Academic Development.
Successful completion of the Account of Professional Practice confers Associate Fellowship of the Higher Education Academy (now known as AdvanceHE) and the post-nominal letters AFHEA.
More information about the programme is available on our website.
Registration for the programme is now open.
Registration to attend the introductory session on 2nd December closes on Friday 25 November at 12 noon. Final registration for the programme closes on 14th January 2023.
9. TEI Forum
The TEI Forum went ahead on 4th October in person and online. Thank you to all that were able to attend. Notes of the discussions at the TEI Forum will be circulated to TEI Forum Members when available.
The next TEI Forum date will take place online on 27th April from 12:00 – 16:00. The link to register your place will be circulated to members in due course.
10. Research Symposium: Theological Education and the Environmental Crisis
Each year we choose a new theme to be a focus for our conversations, and we begin our exploration of the theme with a research symposium.
Our 2022 symposium met to discuss the roles that theological education can play in enabling churches and wider society to face the multiple overlapping crises, including the climate crisis, that form the environmental crisis. We met in St John’s College, Durham, to discuss:
A number of short videos from the symposium – each just a few minutes long – are available at https://www.durham.ac.uk/departments/academic/common-awards/research/research-themes/#d.en.1126088. ‘Theological Education and the Climate Crisis' will also be the theme of our summer conference in early July 2023.
11. Research Themes Consultation
Each year, we take a new theme as a focus for some of our work. We host a symposium on the theme, invite seedcorn grant applications that relate to it, and take it as the topic for our July conference.
Past themes have included Theological Education and the Climate Crisis, Learning for the Whole of Life, Bodies and Pedagogies, Theological Reflection, and Receptivity, and you can find out more about them on our website.
We last consulted TEIs about these themes back in 2019, and that consultation has informed all our choices since then. We now need, however, some fresh input.
If you have an idea for a theme that you think would be a good focus for Common Awards research, please get in touch with me at mike.higton@durham.ac.uk.
It needs to be a theme:
This is not the kind of process in which we gather proposals and then declare a single winner. We will be looking at all the responses we receive, together with feedback from our various church partners and the Common Awards team, and we will probably end up combining and reworking several proposals as we discern appropriate themes for the next few years.
Please send your thoughts (or any questions you might have) to Mike on mike.higton@durham.ac.uk by the end of Fri 2nd December.
12. Webinars
Our first webinar of the year is taking place on Thursday 10th November at 1.00-2.30pm entitled:
‘Hope Dealing: Power, Gangsterism and Church Leadership in Times of Despair’
The event will be hosted by Selina Stone, with guest contributions from Fr Luke Larner and Fr Rajiv Sidhu who friends, priests and PhD researchers at Roehampton University. In both their ministry in local communities and in their academic work, they are concerned with class, liberation and racial justice.
Please sign up here
13. Further Information
The full 2022/2023 academic calendar is available here.
With thanks,
The Common Awards Team
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