You may have seen on Campusweb the announcement of the introduction, in 2019/20, of discussion boards within modules in Minerva to provide in-course feedback – you can find the announcement here: https://www.leeds.ac.uk/forstaff/news/article/6714/student_voice_enhancing_learning_and_teaching It’s particularly important to emphasise that this initiative is about the provision of feedback as to the running of the course and the student experience, not for questions about module content (which I know many of us already use Minerva discussion boards for, sometimes making good use of anonymity).  UCU was not consulted on this. We have a number of concerns which we have raised with University management.  1. Understanding how a module is going from a student point of view is crucial. There are many ways of doing this, and colleagues around the university will have their own methods, from mid-module feedback forms, to focus groups, to in-class methods, to discussion boards (anonymous and otherwise). The appropriate mechanism will vary from discipline to discipline and according to class size and learning approach, and is a core issue of pedagogy, not an administrative add-on. We understand that this discussion board method has been piloted but we have not been told anything about how and where that pilot was … continue reading