Collaborating WITH Students Instead of ABOUT Students

During the first week of June, I had the opportunity to attend the International Consortium of Educational Developers (ICED) conference in Atlanta. Peter Felton gave the closing keynote in which he encouraged us to reimagine the place of students in our work. One of the highlights of this talk for me was his categorization of common views about students in the processes of teaching and learning within higher education. These can be summarized as follows:

1. Students are objects of, data sources for, or absent from the educational process.
2. Students are customers, consumers, or products of the educational process.
3. Students are agents of, actors in, or partners in the educational process.

Faculty, administrators, and students themselves may hold one or more of these views at various points during their time in college. Examples of students as objects can be found in learning analytics, accreditation assessment, and students as participants in our SoTL projects. Students as consumers or products can be seen in the various versions of the student comment “I pay for you to teach me” and industry input on what skills and competence they want to see in entry level hires. Students become agents and partners in the process when those in positions of power in the system begin to engage the student voice, work with and value student input in designing courses, curriculum, or research projects. Please note that each of these views has a place in higher education, but we often spend more time thinking about our students as objects, data, consumers, and products than as agents and partners in their learning process.

The Students as Partners movement “re-envisions students and [faculty] as active collaborators in teaching and learning” (Mercer-Mapstone, et al., 2017, p. 1).  These partnerships may occur in subject-based research and inquiry, scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL), curriculum design and pedagogy, or learning, teaching, and assessment. In their review of the empirical literature around this work, Mercer-Mapstone (2017) and colleagues, found the following positive outcomes appeared most frequently:

Positive Outcomes for Students

1. Increased student engagement/motivation/ownership for learning
2. Increased student confidence/self-efficacy
3. Increased understanding of the “other’s” experience (e.g. students understanding faculty experiences)
4. Enhanced relationships or trust between students and faculty
5. Increased student learning about their own learning (meta-cognitive learning, self-evaluation, self-awareness)

Positive Outcomes for Faculty

1. Enhanced relationships or trust between students and faculty
2. Development of new or better teaching or curriculum materials
3. Increased understanding of the “other’s” experience (e.g. staff understanding student experiences)
4. New beliefs about teaching and learning that change practices for the better
5. Re-conceptualization of teaching as a collaborative process to foster learning

During the 2018-2019 academic year, the CITL will be sponsoring a faculty learning community (FLC) around students as partners in SoTL. Faculty and undergraduate student members of the FLC will explore the benefits and challenges of these types of partnerships for the IUB community as well as make recommendations for expanding and sustaining these types of partnerships moving forward. If you are interested in exploring collaborating with undergraduate students in your SoTL work, consider applying for our upcoming FLC: Students as Partners in SoTL. Contact Shannon Sipes if you have questions about this FLC or to schedule an individual consultation on this topic.

 

Image Source: Healey, M., Flint, A., & Harrington, K. (2014). Engagement through partnership: Students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education. The Higher Education Academy.

Resources: Mercer-Mapstone, L., Dvorakova, L. S., 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), 1-23.