Thanks Michael

I'll have a word with Archie and Ken and see if we can come up with a sensible venue and some date suggestions. 


Rowdy Yates 
Senior Research Fellow
Scottish Addiction Studies
Sociology, Social Policy & Criminology Section
Department of Applied Social Science
University of Stirling

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-----Original Message-----
From: Addiction Course Convenors [mailto:[log in to unmask]] On Behalf Of Michael Morgan
Sent: 16 June 2008 11:41
To: [log in to unmask]
Subject: [Addiction Course Convenors] Minutes of the meeting held in London on May 19th

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.

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