Department of CS newsletter

What have been our priorities?

Welcome and Induction It was a huge achievement by all teams transferring our welcome activities online and trying to recreate that start-of-year buzz virtually. The organisation, planning and technical upskilling involved was no mean feat! Student engagement was high and it was rewarding to see students asking lots of questions and starting to form friendships. A big positive was the ability to record sessions so we have lots of ready-made resources for students to access anytime.

Highlights included:

• A School of Engineering ‘Society Showcase’, where society committees ran interactive Zoom sessions promoting their societies. We’ll be using this format again as it worked well – our only challenge being that many rooms reached full capacity quickly!
• Successful PASS and Wellbeing activities, with the help of our PASS leaders and student support colleagues, including Kahoot quizzes, breakout rooms and informal discussions to get students talking.

Student belonging and sense of community We have been working hard to look at how to create a sense of community, and ensure everyone remains connected, whilst we’re not on campus. Communicating with our students has been instrumental here, and they have shown great innovation in delivering a variety of student-led social events, including virtual escape rooms, online movie, games & speed friending nights, Department quizzes and Bake off competitions.

We have now recruited over 140 reps across the School and it’s really important we look at how we engage and motivate them to support the community feel within their Departments.

Events such as our Meet the Academics event in CEAS were also great to enhance that community feel in Departments and for students to hear about their academic’s research interests – as well as what they do in their spare time!

Communication with students We’ve been trying to streamline the way we communicate with students. Our goal is to include all vital information in Department newsletters, so students only have to look in one place, once a week, for updates, rather than information overload in multiple places! We're also trying to make content on social media, particularly Instagram, more entertaining. A successful example of this was our #NorthCampusHistory campaign, where we posted pictures of North Campus buildings and a short paragraph about their history – which received a lot of engagement on all accounts.

Careers and Employability

1. are concerned about their employability more than ever, and so we have been working alongside the Careers Service to actively promote what they do and market it in a way to appeal specifically to engineering students. There are some great services available to support our students, but they are often hard to find or difficult to understand the value of. The virtual STEM Careers fair was well received by students, as were the workshops for all Y2 students on finding work experience. Our popular, ‘Meet the Professionals – Engineering’ workshop is back by popular demand next week too.

Feedback Getting feedback from students is even more important this year with the new blended and online learning and academics having less face-to-face contact with students. We have been supporting colleagues with collecting feedback through different channels such as:

• The introduction of discussion breakout groups in CEAS SSLCs, where key issues raised by students are debated and ideas and solutions generated. Reps are also planning feedback drop-ins.
• Mid-semester ‘Health Check’ surveys in Computer Science. In the 4 days that they were open they had over 500 hundred responses across the three years!
• Informal Drop-in feedback Q&As in EEE and MACE have helped to pick up some of the smaller issues and deal with them quickly - and take the larger challenges to the SSLCs.

And, what do we have coming up?

Feedback Our focus now is to analyse the data, draw out the key themes and ensure that we are effectively communicating to students how we are addressing their feedback. We’re also trying to pull out the good news stories, share examples of student success and promote best practice across different areas.

We have set up a Student Advisory Group with 25 students from across Engineering and Natural Sciences. The first meeting focused on student feedback on the four themes from the Student Experience Action Plan and this group will be meeting fortnightly to provide direction and student insight for various upcoming student experience initiatives.

Virtual celebrations will be taking place between the 14^th-18^th December. We are hoping to build on the success of the July celebrations (now we know what we’re doing!) to ensure that our PGTs can celebrate their achievements until they can hopefully return to campus for their graduation ceremony. We currently brainstorming ideas.

Welcome back. It has recently been announced that there will be a two week welcome programme: w/c 1 February and w/c 8 February 2021. The focus will be on connection and belonging (and from speaking with students, it is important that it is a time for a good break and catch up) and we’re currently thinking about how we can create opportunities for students to connect with course mates, other students, academics, University staff etc. through a range of interventions and small group activities across both weeks. Any ideas welcomed…

 Karen Butterworth Student Experience Manager School of Engineering

(Previously emailed by Mustafa Mustafa):
Applications are now open for the 2021 CHERISH De Crucible.  This will be the fifth year of this unique ECR training and networking opportunity. Held at three different locations, the programme offers intense skills labs with a variety of speakers from academia, NGO’s and industry. Find out more and apply through: https://www.swansea.ac.uk/science/computationalfoundry/cherish-de/the-crucible/

It also may be of interest to see some of the testimonials from previous participants and videos from previous events: https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PL1AtZJAjP0NhF9yArMn1bxzY8jcWi0ef0
The response to the Crucible programme is always positive; it can be intense, but the experience has been so valuable to over 100 ECRs, and it would be fantastic if you can join us. Please get in touch with any questions you may have: p.j.lauder@swansea.ac.uk (Penny Lauder, CHERISH DE Impact & Engagement Officer)

Riza Batista and Sarah Clinch from our department have participated a few years back and they can certainly recommend this opportunity.

We should now be able to accommodate a return to campus for 2 days a week (depending on demand and notwithstanding new governmental advice).

PGRs should provided their Supervisor with the following information

1. What is the room number you wish to work in?

2. Have you discussed this your supervisor?

3. Have you read the guidance on returning to campus?

4. Have you read the relevant Risk assessments - especially the one on office use?

5. Have you read the Building induction slideset?

6. Have you displayed an office occupancy notice on your door?

7. Do you understand about the use of face masks in the building?

8. Have you raised any health concerns with your coming into the building?

9. What two days would you prefer (excluding out of hours). These are a request there's no guarantee you will get them.

Further details are available via the Wiki page

https://wiki.cs.manchester.ac.uk/index.php/GTAs_and_PhD_students_returning_to_campus

Further, if additional days are required the the University has a system maintained by the library. You can book a study space across the library sites via this link: https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/locations-and-opening-hours/study-spaces/

There are over 900 spaces which students can book across the various library sites. Students need to wear a face mask at all times (unless they have a medical exemption).

We have also opened PGR specific study spaces in the Christie’s Bistro – students can book these spaces here: https://www.library.manchester.ac.uk/locations-and-opening-hours/study-spaces/other-campus-study-spaces/

Deadline: 09 December 2020

MRC, ESRC and NIHR have £20M available to fund  two or three proposals over 3 years (starting in the New Year). While the scope of the funding call is on the longer term biological and health impacts of COVID-19, proposals may also wish to capture or consider societal factors and demographic characteristics that influence these outcomes, and any downstream social and economic effects (for example, returning to work, impacts on carers).

Example areas that the research may address include but are not limited to:

• determining whether long COVID is a distinct syndrome or a set of syndromes
• identifying whether an identifiable subgroup of symptoms exists
• determining the prevalence of long COVID
• understanding factors that increase or diminish the risk of long COVID, this might include viral titre, age, gender, ethnicity, socioeconomic status or comorbidities
• comparison with other cohorts, for example, seasonal influenza
• understanding the trajectory and how people experience long COVID over time including any biological, social or ecological interactions that impact on the severity of symptoms
• determining the pathogenesis of long COVID
• developing and assessing the effectiveness of approaches to reduce the risk of long COVID or interventions and therapies to address its impacts
• management of long COVID in primary care and social care settings.

Funding approach
This call is looking to fund two or three ambitious and comprehensive proposals and a small number of study extensions which take a holistic approach through either:

• extending existing studies, platform or population resources, including data linkage activities, with justification for clear added value to these established activities
• establishing new large scale collaborative research programmes, which include other disciplines, cohorts and data sources where possible and appropriate, including those already supported by UKRI or NIHR COVID-19 funding (COVID-19 funded research).
• The call is not looking to fund small-scale, standalone projects focusing on discrete areas.

Where possible, research platforms or cohorts should be designed in such a way that they can also support intervention assessment, either as part of original plans or in due course.

Proposals should also consider the lived experiences of those suffering with the effects of COVID-19 and include plans for patient and public involvement.

This should include engagement of participants in the co-production of research questions and their delivery, with consideration of representative participation including from social care, under served and less frequently heard communities.

Please note that the funders recognise that proposed research may be based on preliminary findings or require further partnership or consortium development.

Proposals are recommended to consider adaptive design or consortium development approaches, supported by provision of risk management strategies or milestones to manage research or consortium refinement along the time course.

Angelo Cangelosi has been awarded a 4-year EPSRC iCASE award from BAE Systems entitled: Trust and Explainable AI in Human-Machine Interaction

This iCASE PhD project aims at the development of novel, explainable 'Theory of Mind' (ToM) models for human-robot interaction. The integration of probabilistic robot ToM models with explainable AI methods offer the opportunity to improve trust in collaborative HMI scenarios by adding a component of “explicit” ToM building and update, to complement existing “implicit” models of intention reading. 

30 day free Zoom sessions

Click the link for more info and to download the schedule click here

Purplewave 2020 /21 is coming soon

Purple T-shirts at the ready, UoM Purplewave is due to make a return. Register your interest here: https://bit.ly/PW2021EoI

TEC Level 2 Complementary Therapies staff CPD free course

We would  like to offer you the opportunity to partake in our fully funded ITEC Level 2 Diploma in Complementary Therapies programme. The course lasts for a total of 10 or 15 weeks, with the following options available to choose from:

 

You will learn basic massage therapy, aromatherapy and reflexology techniques. The course has a large focus on relaxation techniques and healthy eating, as well as promoting general health & wellbeing.

If you are interested in this opportunity and would like to secure a place, please contact us via one of the following methods:

• Jessica Oates 0161 236 7181
• manchester@whiterosebeautycolleges.co.uk

Web: http://www.whiterosebeautycolleges.co.uk/colleges/?manchester