Guidelines for the Learning Environment Committee

The Learning Environment Committee is to contribute to the students' learning environment being organised in the best way possible.
Updated Published

Section 1 Mandate

1. The Learning Environment Committee (LEC) at NLA University College's head office reports directly to the university college board and is to contribute to the students' learning environment being organised in the best way possible, cf the provisions concerning the learning environment in section 4-3 of the Universities and University Colleges Act.


2. The LEC shall carry out tasks relating to:

  • student welfare
  • the physical learning environment, as this is referred to in section 4-3 of the Act
  • the students' psychosocial learning environment
  • the study environment at the university college
  • the institution's quality assurance and evaluation work

3. The board may order the LEC to carry out other tasks. The committee may itself propose other tasks that it believes are important to the efforts to ensure a good study and learning environment.


4. The LEC is to have special responsibility for ensuring that the learning environment at NLA University College is based on the principle of universal design and that the university college has satisfactory individual adaptation schemes.


5. According to section 4-3 of the Act, the LEC shall be kept informed of complaints that the institutions receive from students regarding the learning environment and the LEC may state its views on such factors to the board. The LEC shall be informed about the further proceedings and decisions that are made. The professional environments have a duty to report any complaints about the learning environment to the heads of the programmes and the heads of the programmes must send a brief report on such complaints to the LEC each semester. [i] The LEC shall similarly be informed of any orders and individual decisions that the Norwegian Labour Inspection Authority issues regarding the institution's learning environment.


6. The LEC's work must be documented and form part of NLA University College's internal quality assurance system.

7. The LEC reports to the board and must prepare an annual report on the institution's work on the learning environment. This report should be submitted before the work on the budget starts and at the latest by 15 August.


Section 2 Appointment, composition, etc

1. The head office LEC is composed of the following

  • Five students and five employees with personal alternate representatives.
  • The head office LEC consists of the chairs and deputy chairs of the local LECs.
  • In addition, the student parliament appoints one representative (it is proposed that the student parliament has a learning environment contact person with a place on the LEC) and NLA University College's management meeting chooses one representative from among its midst.
  • If it sees a need for this, the committee can itself appoint permanent observers to the committee, and can summon the observers for individual issues.

2. The local LECs are composed of the following

  • Three students and three employees with personal alternate representatives. Study locations that so wish may choose to have two students and two employees with personal alternate representatives.
  • The student representatives are appointed by the student council, and at least one student must be a member of the student council (in order to ensure good communication with the student council).
  • Three/two employees of the study location with personal alternate representatives are to be appointed, of whom one is to hold a senior post and one is to hold an administrative post. If there are two representatives here, one is to hold a senior administrative post and the other is to be a member of the scientific staff. The deputy rector/rector is to appoint these following proposals by the staff.
  • When appointing members, attempts should be made to ensure a gender balance and representation based on the overall range of studies offered.

3. The relationship between local and head office LECs
Most issues are raised and resolved locally on campus. Issues that are important for the entire university college learning environment are forwarded to the head office LEC. The head office LEC raises issues that apply to the university college as a whole. The local LECs report to the head office LEC, which prepares a report for the board.

4. Employees are appointed for three years at a time. One student is appointed for two years at a time, while the other students are appointed for one year (academic year).

5. The LEC appoints its own chair and deputy chair. The chair is appointed for one year at a time, and the position alternates between the employees' and the students' representatives. When the chair is an employee, the deputy chair is to be a student, and vice versa.

6. The rector/deputy rector convenes an initial meeting by 1 October for local LECs and by 15 October for the head office LEC.

7. Local LECs must normally hold at least four meetings in an academic year, while the head office LEC must hold at least two meetings.

Adopted by the board on 16 December 2013