SUBJECT CENTRE FOR LANGUAGES, LINGUISTICS AND AREA STUDIES

MINUTES OF THE MEETING OF THE MANAGEMENT GROUP
TUESDAY 15 JANUARY 2002

CILT

Present
Prof Michael Kelly (Chair and Director of Subject Centre), Janet Bartle (Academic Coordinator, C&IT), Alison Dickens (Academic Coordinator Linguistics and Area Studies), Dawn Ebbrell (CILT Higher Education Information Officer), Roel Vismans (Director of the C&IT Centre), Vicky Wright (Academic Coordinator, Language), Liz Ashurst (Centre Manager and Minutes Secretary)

1.	Minutes of the last meeting and matters arising
Institutional visits up date
It was agreed that Subject Centre publicity materials should be sent to the ALLADIN project and the Interculture project as these two were undertaking institutional visits.  
Action SN/LJC

Away day
The best time for this would be the date of the next management group meeting, a possible venue being Goodenough college in central London where the Americanisation project away day was held.  A decision would be made shortly as to whether to have the 23 May as an away day or whether to use the date for the scheduled management group meeting.  

Hull event
At the September meeting of the Management Group, it was proposed that an Area Studies event would be held in Hull.  RV and AD were investigating dates.  It is possible that such an event would be held on 8 or 22 May 2002.  

Website
This was to be discussed in more detail later in the meeting.  It was noted that the questionnaire devised for the projects had not included questions on the website.  However it would be possible to evaluate reaction to the web pages which would be produced for the projects.  

Projects to bid for
Unfortunately, it had not been possible for the Hull team to formulate a bid to the European Union e learning initiative.  

M learning
MHK had not been able to take any action on this.  It was agreed that the Hull team should consider whether they wished to pursue this.  

2.	Review of roles and responsibilities
It was agreed that a brief report on the future role of the C&IT Centre would be tabled at the Advisory Board meeting though there would be no need for a lengthy discussion of the issue.  RV accepted that the Subject Centre as a whole would benefit if the C&IT Centre were to have a more focussed role.  It would be focussing on the dissemination of good practice in C&IT which would be developing the work they had carried out as a CTI Centre.  It would be important to define clearly what the C&IT Centre would be expected to deliver after 31 July 2002.  It was agreed that MHK and RV would liaise in the next few weeks to agree a contract for next year.   It would also be important to consider the transition period before full responsibility for the website was transferred to Southampton.  

JB noted that she would wish to continue to contribute to SC events and to develop the resource centre in Hull.  She would also wish to contribute to the content of the website even though the management of the website would now be transferred to Southampton.  

MHK felt that the refocussing of the activity of the C&IT Centre would bring clarity to the relationship between the different parts of the SC team and it would enable the C&IT team to concentrate all its energies on the areas where they have most experience.  

RV suggested that members of the Advisory Board might be invited to send to the Chair their views on the nature of the new partnership between the Southampton team and the Hull team.

JB reported that the enquiries received by the C&IT Centre were principally of a very specific nature.  Enquirers usually wanted immediate answers to issues which they needed to address in the short term.  

It was agreed that the C&IT Centre had many different audiences and it must endeavour to meet the needs of all audiences if the Subject Centre as a whole was to fulfil its remit of both supporting all colleagues in learning and teaching and acting as a change agent.  The different audiences might be categorised as

•	Managers, decision makers, staff developers ie those people who influence allocation of budgets
•	Academics with different levels of knowledge and expertise in using C&IT in learning and teaching.  This would range from those people who have very little knowledge and need to catch up with new initiatives to those at the forefront of new initiatives in the use of C&IT.

VW suggested that it would be useful to undertake an ongoing mapping of the sector so that the SC had up to date information on the developments in the use of C&IT for learning and teaching.  This work was also useful when speakers for events needed to be identified.  

RV pointed out that the remit of the Subject Centre was extremely wide.  It was therefore agreed that the focus of C&IT Centre activity should be Languages, Linguistics and Language Related studies as the Area Studies constituency would be served through the bid to the LTSN Tranche 2 fund (see later notes).  

It was agreed to establish a Special Interest Group for C&IT.  Either RV or JB would chair the group.  JB would identify possible members.  Graham Davies, for example, would be a possible member.  
Action JB

Summary of action points
•	JB would establish a Special Interest Group for C&IT.  She would consult with RV, the C&IT team and the Management Group
•	JB would take the lead on mapping the sector seeking help and advice from the Management Group as appropriate
•	RV and MHK would negotiate the transition issues which would arise from transferring responsibility for the website to Southampton. 
•	RV and MHK would draft a new contract identifying the responsibilities of the C&IT Centre after 31 July 2002

3.	LTSN – bids for Tranche 2 funding
There were two broad areas in which the SC could bid and within these there were certain constraints.

Subject Specific activity
The SC could bid for up to £75K under any or all of the following areas:
Learning and teaching development, recognising complexity and HE delivered in FE colleges, subject based pedagogic research and securing dissemination.  

It was agreed that the focus of the bids should be pedagogic research (a bid for £35K) and securing dissemination (a bid for £40K).  

Dissemination
VW would take the lead on the dissemination bid which would involve commissioning people to produce materials with a particular focus on lesser widely used and lesser widely taught languages and possibly also materials for teaching literature and culture on MFL programmes.
Action VW

Pegagogic research
DE would take a lead on this bid.  The proposal would be for a research assistant who would map the pedagogical research taking place in the content part of MFL programmes.  Possible focuses of the project could be the teaching of literature in ab initio language programmes, the development of critical thinking skills and the teaching of close reading of texts.  The RA would also coordinate the commissioning of new research projects in these areas.  Issues highlighted in the report written by DE on meetings with Charles Desforges could be incorporated into the bid.  Such a bid would have obvious synergies with the research database project managed by CILT and Oxford Brookes funded by the Collaboration Programme.  
         
Collaborative projects
The LTSN executive would be expecting us to put in a bid for a project to improve provision for Area Studies. It was agreed that a bid should be formulated to employ, for 18 months, a project coordinator who would work with cognate SCs.  The coordinator would organise a programme of activity to support Area Studies which would include running workshops, developing the website in this area and disseminating innovation in C&IT in this area.  There should also be money set aside to be distributed for mini- projects.  

AD noted that there had not been much work done to date on teaching and learning in the Area Studies field. It was also noted that it would be necessary to take a different approach with the Area Studies community from that adopted for colleagues teaching languages and linguistics.  

It was recognised that the purpose of the bid would be to develop a template for providing ongoing support for the Area Studies community.  It would be important to devise ways of ensuring that other SCs shared the responsibility for Area Studies whilst retaining management of supporting this community with our SC.  Recommendations for future support for Area Studies after the life of the Project would therefore need to be included in the bid.  

4.	Marketing activities: current and future plans
If the Subject Centre project to produce the marketing pack goes well, it could be extended so that packs were produced for schools.  It would be necessary to apply for additional funding for this.  MHK would discuss this with Lid King to establish whether CILT might wish to take this further. 
Action LK

5.	Evaluation
The latest evaluation document was warmly welcomed and various quotations from interviewees on how they would define the Subject Centre were commended.  It was clear that the opportunities for networking afforded by Subject Centre activity were welcomed.  

To raise the profile of the Subject Centre further and to assist with planning activity, it was agreed that it would be helpful to be systematic about timing events so that they fitted in with when colleagues would be thinking about them.  It would mean that colleagues would know when to expect Subject Centre events and it would enable SC staff to book venues well in advance.

It was agreed that, for the Languages community, events could take place in October, March and June as they are doing this year.  The June event would either be the biennial conference or, in alternating years, an event to showcase projects which could also be badged as a partner finding event.   The October event could be targeted at staff responsible for admissions.  

Support would be offered to CILT if they were intending to hold events annually on 26 September to celebrate the European Year of Languages. NB the school of Modern Languages at Southampton intends to hold an annual symposium on the theme of multilingualism on that date for which the Subject Centre would be providing administrative support. 

It was generally agreed that we should organise the programme of events further in advance if possible.  DE agreed to liaise with Alison Cutler, Head of events at CILT, to see if there were further opportunities for collaboration between the Subject centre and CILT.  

6.	2002 conference
RV noted that he and the C&IT team had hoped that they would have a dedicated room at the conference where delegates could drop in and browse software etc.  DE reported that an ICT room with 18 internet points was available but some of the workshops would be taking place in there.  It was agreed that DE would work on the conference programme to ensure that there were some significant blocks of time where the C&IT team could host a drop in session.  
Action DE

7.	Any other business
No items were taken under AOB. 

8.	Date of the next meeting
23 May 2002

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