Student-Staff Partnerships: A Practical Guide

This post by John Owen and Cath Wasiuk, presents a practical guide to getting started with student-staff partnerships and co-creation. It discusses the concept of student-staff partnerships, why they are important and their potential to positively impact students, staff and institutions. It also examines practical considerations and presents an example of a student-staff partnership project at The University of Manchester.

What are student-staff partnerships?

Why are student-staff partnerships important?

Student-staff partnerships have shown to improve the employability of students, through the development of skills, confidence, team working and other attributes (Jarvis et al. 2013).

This comment from a recent student partner shows how they applied the experience they gained from their partnership project, during a work placement assessment day at a pharmaceuticals company —

One of the tasks was to debate and problem solve within the group of candidates. This turned out to be my best performance of the day (this would never have been the case this time last year!)

And from a staff team member —

Watching the students develop their own skills and confidence over the course of the project was very rewarding and gave me the feeling that we were doing something right.

Student-staff partnerships also present opportunities to improve student (and staff) reciprocal understanding of teaching and learning processes, increase self-awareness, belonging, motivation and empathy, and become more active self-led learners (Hattie 2009; Bovill et al. 2011).

Further comments from recent student partners —

It is a unique opportunity; a great way to meet new people and build transferable skills. This project has changed my mindset surrounding approaches to curriculum development.

I thoroughly enjoyed my time working as a Student Project Partner. The opportunity to have a say in how the course is run was brilliant — it really made me feel like a valued member of the team, and we ended up discovering issues that staff simply hadn’t considered before.

Student-staff partnerships have the potential to broaden inclusivity and participation with underrepresented students. Online tools and platforms can provide alternative communication channels and methods of collaboration, particularly for students who might not be confident speaking in large face to face group settings (Moore-Cherry et al. 2016). There are also opportunities to work with students who rely on work to support their studies. For example, student partners could be paid for their contribution to the design or redesign of courses. This is even more relevant at the moment as many opportunities in the workplace normally taken by students will be affected by COVID19.

Staff also benefit from working in partnership with students, where they can gain valuable insights from the student perspective and their direct experience of learning and teaching in Higher Education (Cook-Sather 2015). The core partnership value of reciprocity implies that “all parties have an interest in, and stand to benefit from, working and/or learning in partnership” (Healey et al. 2014).

An academic partner recently reflected —

The experience of developing our online course has at one level, been pretty profound. I’m used to leading, and developing things on my own. I had to learn to let go of the reins, to appreciate other ideas and directions.

They were not my assistants, but people with as much voice and opinion as others in the team, with as much right to ideas and direction for the course.

Student-staff partnerships can challenge the students as customers approach and lead to creativity through co-creation and facilitate inclusion, empathy, and resilience of both students and staff (Lubicz-Nawrocka 2019), therefore resulting in a much more collaborative and integrated learning community (Blake et al. 2020).

These benefits from student-staff partnerships have the potential to address many of the major challenges facing institutions and the HE sector and could positively influence institutional change (Mercer-Mapstone and Clarke 2018).

Practical considerations for the co-creation of learning and teaching

Co-creation of the curriculum — a Manchester approach

To find out more about the tools in the video, see this post on Project Tools for Teams.

You can also read more about micro-sprints and the agile model at the Student and Teaching Engagement through Partnerships publication.

References

• Blake, J., Aston, S. and Grayson, N. (2020). From the outside in: bringing student engagement to the centre. New Review of Academic Librarianship, pp.1–10. [online].
• Bovill, C. (2019). A co-creation of learning and teaching typology: What kind of co-creation are you planning or doing? International Journal for Students as Partners, 3(2), pp.91–98. [online].
• Bovill, C., Cook‐Sather, A. and Felten, P. (2011). Students as co‐creators of teaching approaches, course design, and curricula: implications for academic developers. International Journal for Academic Development, 16(2), pp.133–145. [online].
• Cook-Sather, A. (2015). Dialogue Across Differences of Position, Perspective, and Identity: Reflective Practice in/on a Student-Faculty Pedagogical Partnership Program. Teachers College Record. [online].
• Hattie, J. (2009). Visible learning a synthesis of over 800 meta-analyses relating to achievement. London; Routledge.
• Healey, M., Flint, A. and Harrington, K. (2014). Engagement through partnership: students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education | Advance HE. [online].
• Jarvis, J., Dickerson, C. and Stockwell, L. (2013). Staff-student Partnership in Practice in Higher Education: The Impact on Learning and Teaching. Procedia — Social and Behavioral Sciences, 90, pp.220–225. [online].
• Lubicz-Nawrocka, T. (2019). Creativity and Collaboration: An Exploration of Empathy, Inclusion, and Resilience in Co-Creation of the Curriculum. Student Engagement in Higher Education Journal, 2(3 SE-Creativity special issue). [online].
• Mercer-Mapstone, L. and Clarke, A. (2018). A Partnership Approach to Scaling Up Student-Staff Partnership at a Large Research-Intensive University. The Journal of Educational Innovation, Partnership and Change, 4(1). [online].
• Moore-Cherry, N. et al. (2016). Inclusive partnership: enhancing student engagement in geography. Journal of Geography in Higher Education, 40(1), pp.84–103. [online].