Students as Partners: benefits and challenges

Increasingly, students are being acknowledged as a valuable yet often unrealised resource in higher education. When engaging students as partners in authentic and collaborative ways that contribute to improved educational experience there are many benefits, but with any innovation there can also be challenges.

Transformative power of Students as Partners

The Higher Education Academy (HEA) has recognised the transformative power of students as partners to advance teaching, learning, and curriculum in higher education (Healey et al., 2014). This is supported by international empirical research that highlights positive outcomes for both students and academics engaged in students as partners initiatives. The following benefits are consolidated from articles by Bovill et al. (2016), Matthews (2017), Mercer-Mapstone et al. (2017), and the University of Queensland (n.d.):

Benefits for students

• increased student engagement/motivation/ownership for learning
• increased student confidence/self-efficacy
• increased understanding of the 'other’s' experience (e.g. students understanding staff experiences)
• enhanced relationship or trust between students and staff
• increased student learning about their own learning (metacognitive learning, self-evaluation, self-awareness)
• raised awareness of graduate attributes or employability skills or career development
• increased sense of belonging to university or discipline or community
• improved student content/discipline learning (actual or perceived)
• positively shifted identity as student/learner/person/professional
• enhanced student-student relationships
• increased meta-cognitive learning
• increased student ownership for learning
• positively shifted power dynamics between students and academics
• engaged and empowered under-represented students
• personal growth through opportunities to build confidence, positive self-concept and construct identities

Benefits for faculty/staff

• enhanced relationship or trust between students and staff
• development of new or better teaching or curriculum materials
• increased understanding of the 'other's' experience (e.g. staff understanding student experiences)
• new beliefs about teaching and learning that change practices for the better
• re-conceptualisation of teaching as a collaborative process to foster learning
• positive career outcomes

Challenges

Knowing some of the challenges before starting can inform your planning and strengthen your resilience for when challenges do arise. Below are five common challenges (sourced from Cook-Sather & Matthews 2021 cited in Healey & Healey, 2021 p. 25) and how you might reframe them as opportunities.

Resistance and reluctance

Challenge: Some students and staff/faculty question partnership or see it as an imposition.

Reframe: There are good reasons why some people will resist the idea (they don’t believe in it, it takes more energy, they see teaching as the lecturer’s job or hold fixed beliefs about roles, it can introduce conflict with different perspectives, etc).

Resilience idea: Start small. Communicate your intentions about why you are engaging in partnership to open up dialogue about student concerns, excitement, and questions. Give it time and be explicit and transparent.

Time

Challenge: There is not enough time to engage in partnership practices.

Reframe: Investing time upfront in developing partnership practices can save you time later, since learning experiences/insights/outcomes will likely be more meaningful and impactful (better).

Resilience idea: Rethink fixed notions of time (schedule) to attend to how you direct your energy and attention.

Curriculum constraints

Challenge: Accreditation or institutional reporting requirements mean you cannot change the institutional assessment framework or metrics.

Reframe: Accept what can’t be changed and focus on what you can co-create.

Resilience idea: Invite your students to consider with you how to meet the institutional requirements, and work within the given constraints to engage in co-creation.

Inclusivity

Challenge: Selecting a small number of students to partner as co-designers, consultants or co-inquirers necessarily means other students are being excluded.

Reframe: Embrace equity as a guiding principle, which might mean including all students or it might mean inviting traditionally underrepresented and underserved students into partnership.

Resilience idea: Open a dialogue with students about what inclusivity might mean in any given context where their input and choice contribute to criteria for selection.

Resources and support

Challenge: Your institution or department does not have programs to support partnership practices.

Reframe: Sometimes you can do more, at least initially, within and between the existing structures than within new ones.

Resilience idea: Consider how you might use existing institutional structures (e.g. independent studies) and redeploy existing resources (e.g. departmental budget lines for teaching assistants, curricular innovation funds).

References

Bovill, C., Cook-Sather, A., Felten, P., Millard, L., & Moore-Cherry, N. (2016). Addressing potential challenges in co-creating learning and teaching: overcoming resistance, navigating institutional norms and ensuring inclusivity in student–staff partnerships. Higher Education, 71(2), 195–208. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10734-015-9896-4

Healey, M., Flint, A., & Harrington, K. (2014). Engagement through partnership: students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education. Higher Education Academy. https://www.advance-he.ac.uk/knowledge-hub/engagement-through-partnership-students-partners-learning-and-teaching-higher

Healey, M. & Healey, R. (2021). Students as partners and change agents handout. Healey HE Consultants. https://www.healeyheconsultants.co.uk/resources

Matthews, K. E. (2017). Five Propositions for Genuine Students as Partners Practice. International Journal for Students as Partners, 1(2). https://doi.org/10.15173/ijsap.v1i2.3315

Mercer-Mapstone, L., Dvorakova, S. L., Matthews, K. E., Abbot, S., Cheng, B., Felten, P., Knorr, K., Marquis, E., Shammas, R., & Swaim, K. (2017). A Systematic Literature Review of Students as Partners in Higher Education. International Journal for Students As Partners, 1(1). https://doi.org/10.15173/ijsap.v1i1.3119

University of Queensland (n.d.). Students as Partners - Institute for Teaching and Learning Innovation. University of Queensland. https://itali.uq.edu.au/advancing-teaching/initiatives/students-partners