University teaching affects no one as much as us students. Therefore, students must also have a say in it. The SUB sees the students as an active part of the university and is committed to making good teaching a reality.
Students must be involved in the designing of courses!
We demand an expansion of student representation in commissions and other bodies. Feedback from students must be taken more seriously and should have consequences for lecturers. Students must be more involved in the design and review of study programmes and courses. Among other things, evaluations must be taken seriously and improvements implemented.
For this purpose, a task force of the SUB, together with the faculty student councils, developed a detailed position paper in 2014. This paper contains the ideas and demands of the SUB:
For the SUB, the students' participation in evaluation of the University courses are central. The evaluation system must be designed according to the interests and concerns of the students, so that they can make their opinions known. In addition to feedback on content, space must be provided for other aspects of the quality of teaching - for example, the use of technology, the extent of critical engagement with the content or the didactic skills of the lecturer. You can read our detailed statements in the position paper:
Bologna does not only mean the division of the old degree programmes into two study sections and the introduction of ECTS points for the purpose of calibrating studies. Bologna also implies a paradigm shift in university teaching, intended to serve competence orientation. Thus, instead of the previous input-oriented teaching, teaching is now supposed to be output-oriented. This student-centred learning is based less on which courses the lecturers in a department want to offer. Rather, the aim is to provide a range of courses that enables students to achieve their study goals in small steps. For the design of the individual course, this means that the study objectives must be written down for this course. Learning objectives must be formulated, communicated and reviewed. The views of the SUB can be found in the position paper:
The student council of the University of Bern has discussed the increased promotion of podcasts and livestreams. In some degree programmes, these are not yet sufficiently offered and there is little incentive for lecturers to offer such tools. On the one hand, this is because the University of Bern does not want to impose any requirements for podcasts. On the other hand, it is because of the presumed negative effects that lecturers are afraid of to be happening.
Podcasts and livestreams have many positive effects. You can use this non-exhaustive list of arguments when talking to the lecturer:
Podcasts make it possible to work while studying, since a person with a (part-time) job can take part in events regardless of time and place and can, for example, catch up on them in the evening. In this sense, podcasts also stand for increased equality of opportunity, because more people can afford to finance their studies themselves.
Podcasts enable a better learning experience. In addition to the slides, they offer an additional learning tool that can be accessed at any time. For example, students can listen to the relevant lecture again if there are any uncertainties. This also increases the chances of success in passing the examination.
Students who were unable to attend the lectures due to illness no longer have to laboriously search for the notes of their fellow students, but can repeat the content at home in a relaxed manner.
In general, podcasts do not cause any additional work, as the infrastructure is now very well developed.
We asked 5 students from the University of Bern to talk about their reasons for wanting more podcasts: