Minutes of the AERC sponsored meeting of the “Advisory Group” of addiction
course convenors held at AERC HQ in London on May 19th
Attended: Ken Barrie, Archie Fulton, Ray Hodgson, Axel Klein, Michael
Morgan, Gillian Tober, Clive Tobutt, Ira Unell, Rowdy Yates.
Matters arising from the minutes of the meeting held at Sussex on January
21st.
We discussed the suggestion from the previous meeting that the AERC might
consider funding a larger number of smaller bursaries in addition to
paying full fees and stipends to full-time students. Ray pointed out that
currently the AERC funds about 12-13 full time students but that they have
to turn down many other good applicants. I suggested that the funding for
just one of these full-time students could fund a dozen small (£750-1,000)
bursaries that would help bring many more good applicants into the field.
We also discussed the possibility that some of the current and previously
funded students may have received NHS income in addition to the stipend.
Ray agreed that it would be worth investigating this and also agreed to
discuss the idea of introducing more, smaller bursaries at the next AERC
board meeting. We also agreed that it might be helpful to survey the
career benefits of AERC funding to past recipients of studentships.
Agenda items
Current courses in the UK – we discussed which courses were currently
running in the UK, which had ceased, and agreed to update the SSA list.
DANOS – we agreed that, in principal, it is helpful to explore how the
DANOS criteria map onto the content of taught courses and that we should
use the Leeds course mapping as an example. We also agreed to investigate
how FEDAP applies to courses.
Course content – we discussed the possibility of sharing knowledge in the
form of an electronic library of teaching material. It was mentioned that
the Drugscope library is looking for a new home and that Alcohol Concern
offers useful electronic resources.
Types of teaching – we discussed the idea of setting up an electronic
resource library of pod casts from experts in the field as a teaching aid
to those who want it.
Distance learning – we discussed the costs and benefits of distance
learning and it was suggested that we set up a list thread to inform
members of developments in this area.
Best practise – we discussed the issue of how to evaluate the content and
quality of the different programmes throughout the UK and the possibility
that we could use external examiners feedback to this end.
Course marketing – we discussed promoting the web presence of our courses
by building web-links between our courses and the AERC website
JISC list membership – we decided to loosen the criteria for membership to
include all convenors of addiction-related courses that are registered at
UK Universities.
Next Meeting – we discussed the possibility of holding the next and final
AERC sponsored meeting of the “Advisory Group” of addiction course
convenors in Glasgow.
|