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An Introduction to Student-Staff Partnership

Oxford Centre for Academic Enhancement and Development, Oxford Brookes University

TEMPLATE VERSION: please make a copy for your own use

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Aims

Understand the theory of partnership within Higher Education
Understand the model for partnership within Brookes’ own context
Identify ways in which we will work as partners on your programme

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The Theory of Partnership within Higher Eduction

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Definitions

“A collaborative, reciprocal process through which all participants have the

opportunity to contribute equally, although not necessarily in the same ways, to curricular or

pedagogical conceptualization, decision making, implementation, investigation, or analysis” (Cook-Sather, Bovill, Felten, 2014).

Student Partners
Students as Partners
Student consultation

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Justification

Bell (2016) outlined many advantages of this approach:

“initiatives have influenced policy and practice (Dunne & Zandstra, 2011)”
“Students co-inquiring with academics become more involved in their learning (Werder, Ware, Thomas, & Skogsberg, 2010)”
Students “ gain graduate attributes that maximise their employability (Dunne & Zandstra, 2011; Bovill, Cook-Sather, Felten, Millard, & Moore-Cherry, 2015)”
Students “can express their learning in different ways (Delpish et al., 2010)”
Staff “co-inquiring with students feel more inspired about their teaching (Werder et al., 2010”
Staff “experience transformed views about teaching (Bovill, 2014; Cook-Sather, 2014a)”

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Partnership at Brookes

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Our Guiding Principles

Connectedness: by working as partners, we feel a greater sense of connectedness and belonging.
Confidence: partnership is a bold step, which develops your confidence in your studies and the skills you are developing
Generosity of spirit: by working together to improve our experience, we are making improvements for all students to come
Enterprising creativity: we are, in some ways, ripping up the rule book and finding a new way of working together�

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Case studies

The Global Majority Collective
OxArch Society
OBBS Student Partners

Text directly from the GMC’s website: Global Majority Collective (GMC) is a group of Social Work students from Oxford Brookes University (OBU) from diverse backgrounds including Africans, Asians and Caribbean. The aim of GMC is to collectively decolonise the Social Work curriculum and create one that is equal, diverse and inclusive. This will be achieved by working collaboratively with the University by seeing in effect current and relevant curriculum being taught in class.

OxArch Society: this student-led group work with staff to ensure they have the best offering. They meet with various members of staff regularly, with the students leading these meetings and identifying ways staff can assist with their aims. For example, staff regularly work with students to identify guest speakers for their weekly seminars.

The Business School has its own Student Partner programme that ran in 2021-22. A small group of students were employed to work with the Faculty to improve the curriculum. This involved a project auditing moodle sites, and another looking at space design within the School.

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Ways of working as partners

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Within the curriculum

These are the sorts of activities we should see going on within your programme, during teaching time for example.

Dialogue between staff and students about our experience
Sharing ideas for improvement
Engaging with activities in class
Completing feedback forms when requested

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Extra-curricular

There will be times where a larger project would be really beneficial, but we don’t have time within our teaching to address it. These would be called “extra-curricular projects” and would work on a voluntary basis, with compensation discussed on a case by case basis.

Brookes Collaborative Teaching Challenge awards funding for a select number of projects each year
Students are encouraged to approach staff if they have an idea for an area of enquiry
Staff may make project suggestions: let them know if you are interested, training will be provided

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Activities

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Activity 1: Discussion

Over to you: what do you think about the concept I have introduced?

Ten minutes

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Activity 2: Statement cards

You will each have a scrap of paper, please finish this sentence:

“I will be a partner in my studies by…”

We will collect and discuss the responses, although you do not have to identify your response if you don’t want to.

Twenty minutes