Students as partners
Partnerships With Students in Learning and Teaching
Partnering with students in teaching and course design is a powerful practice that can transform teaching. Relationship rich environments of learning are known to lead to improvements in student learning and the experiences of learning (Felten and Lambert 2020). Cathy Bovill (2019) defines “partnership” as the “co-creation of learning and teaching [that] occurs when students work collaboratively with one another and with the instructor to create components of curricula and/or pedagogical approaches” (p 91.) The types of instructor-student partnership vary greatly, from inviting students to choose some of the course topics, contributing readings, writing exam questions or choosing the weighting or format of assignments (Didicher, 2016) to co-facilitating course sessions and participating in teaching-inquiry or curriculum renewal projects.
There are many interpretations of partnering with students. Healey, Flint and Harrington (2014) argue that partnership is a “specific form of student engagement… a way of doing things, rather than an outcome in itself.” Felten (2014) and Mercer-Mapstone et. al. (2017) suggest that partnership initiatives occur in four major areas, with varying disciplinary contexts and learning/teaching circumstances. These are represented in Figure 1.
- Learning, teaching and assessment of learning
- Subject-based inquiry
- Scholarship of teaching and learning
- Curriculum and pedagogic practice
PRINCIPLES OF PARTNERING WITH STUDENTS
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EXAMPLES OF STUDENT-FACULTY PARTNERSHIPS
There are many ways to engage students as partners that range from simple, low stakes with few resource requirements to intensive, complex with extensive requirements. Bovill (2019) identifies a typology for partnering in co-creating and planning that illustrates students can engage in different roles, including representative, consultant, collaborator, co-designer and co-leader/co-facilitator, enabling a range of options for instructors to consider. Partnerships vary on a continuum from light to deep, simple to complex, requiring different levels of resources, time, risk and commitments from students as well as instructors. The majority of the examples in this section are learning, teaching, and assessment partnerships. If you would like to learn more about partnerships in curriculum development or other areas, please set up a consultation with a CEE team member.
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BENEFITS OF PARTNERING WITH STUDENTS
Relationship-rich partnerships between instructors and students have the potential to foster a more inclusive and dynamic relational learning environment that ultimately leads to better outcomes. Partnerships with students in relationship-rich pedagogies help instructors to be better teachers, students better learners and all better citizens (Felten, 2014; Mercer-Mapstone et al, 2017). There are well documented benefits and positive outcomes that result from partnering with students including deeper learning, increased confidence and self-efficacy, improved academic performance and leadership. For instructors, there is a sense of enhanced satisfaction, new beliefs about teaching, enhanced trust of students and a more fulfilling teaching experience (Mercer-Mapstone, 2017). In an environment of relationship-rich education (Felten and Lambert, 2020), that embodies respect, reciprocity and shared responsibility for learning, every student experiences a genuine welcome and deep care, all are inspired to learn and to develop a web of significant relationships that contribute to a sense of belonging and finally all students explore questions of personal meaning and purpose.
TENSIONS in PARTNERSHIPS
While the benefits to partnering outweigh the challenges, there can be tensions, which can be mitigated by considering the following (Bovill et.al. 2016).
- Integrating a partnering approach will benefit from preparing students and instructors.
- Sharing power and authority offers opportunities for faculty to explore innovations and alternative teaching and pedagogic practices.
- Performance expectations for the scope and depth of partnership needs consideration.
- Institutional cultures and practices may require creative solutions.
GETTING STARTED WITH PARTNERSHIPS
Begin with self-reflection or teaching team reflection using these questions as a guide:
- In what ways are students already partnering in my course/our curriculum?
- How might students and instructors benefit from a partnering approach?
- What scope of partnership might work as a starting place?
- How could the principles of partnership be applied in simple but impactful ways?
- Where do I/we go for additional support?
Practical Resources
- A Guide to Students as Partners - Elon
- Partnering with Students a Presentation by Peter Felton - McMaster University
- Students as Partners UBC
- Students as Partners - Elon
- International Institute on Students as Partners - McMaster University; University of Adelaide
- International Journal for Students as Partners (open access)
Try This...
- Ask students what they want to learn and how they might self-assess their progress.
- Ask students to recommend optional readings for one of the topics in the course.
- Suggest that your students co-create an assignment, a rubric, or an activity.
- Initiate student partners into curriculum renewal processes.
- At the end of the course, invite students to write a one paragraph letter to students taking the course the following term, sharing study strategies and advice for student success.
- Invite upper year students to create a video summary of how they have applied learning from first-year courses throughout their program and share with your first-year class.
CREATIVE COMMONS LICENSE
