A Partnership Model: Student Teaching and Learning Consultants

The ‘Students as Teaching and Learning Consultants’ project aims to build student and staff dialogue about teaching and learning approaches, activities and experiences by adopting a partnership model and a collaborative ethos positioning students as active participants central to producing knowledge about how to enhance and develop teaching and learning. The project offers academic staff a qualified student perspective (at points of need) that goes beyond the end of module evaluation and national student survey data. The session will explore project findings related to how to go beyond merely “listening to students” and instead view students as “change-agents”; equal and knowledgeable partners in structuring the teaching and learning experience.

The session begins with a short introduction to the project. In the first group activity delegates work with matching cards featuring a variety of mechanisms for student consultation written on them (such as student panel, NSS) with cards that have characteristics written on them (such as anonymous, tokenistic, developmental). The groups then feedback to compare the selections made and the reasoning behind this.

In a second activity, groups are asked to use the “Diamond 9 technique” as a tool to prioritise these student consultation mechanisms according to whether they are collaborative and reflect student as active participants working in partnership with staff. The authors will introduce Arnstein’s ladder of citizen participation, and an adapted version relating to levels of student participation developed by Bovill and Bulley (2011).

The activities will enable delegates to reflect on their current models for student engagement and active participation, to discuss and explore what it means to have authentic student participation/engagement and discover ways to achieve this.