Student Staff Partnership
Student staff partnership is an embedded approach which has shaped institutional policy, practice and strategy at the University of Hertfordshire for more than a decade. Students work closely with senior managers, sitting on all significant committees and working groups. The annual and periodic review of programmes must include student involvement, trained student mentors work with staff developing and embedding technological change and our Charter, Graduate Attributes and Values are all co-designed.
The Learning and Teaching Innovation Centre (LTIC) hosts a Student Staff Partnership Network, which welcomes members from across the University community to share and develop partnership practice. It makes this work more visible and helps to shape a positive culture of learning, improve our shared understanding and develop the confidence of staff and students. It enables us to share expertise and good practice, inspires innovation and helps refine and extend existing partnership working into all areas of academic practice.
The LTIC team champion this work and engage in a range of research presented across various formats. Partnership working was the focus of our own Learning and Teaching Conference in 2019, we contribute to external events and have worked to develop sector resources.
Outputs include a broad range from short, illustrative case studies to a practical toolkit for building community and a philosophical treatise on the nature of partnership. A selection of publications are summarised here:
Staff-student partnership in practice in higher education: the impact on learning and teaching involved six different disciplinary teams exploring the impact of their partnership on development and enhancement within learning and teaching. The paper explores some of the positive aspects noted by staff and students.
Staff–student collaboration: student learning from working together to enhance educational practice in higher education . The paper contributes to the body of work on partnership working detailing reports from students focusing on their learning from working collaboratively with staff, especially in relation to graduate attributes, employability and their own identity as learners.
Aspects of learning, opportunities and challenges associated with partnership working are explored in Student-staff partnership in learning and teaching which details projects that have taken place at the University of Hertfordshire over a period of 6 years.
Anyone wanting to find out more about partnership project will find this practical source a great place to start: Taking down the wall: sharing perspectives. Student-staff partnership projects in learning and teaching. A practical resource for students and staff
Another useful collection of resources developed at UH and hosted by AdvanceHE offers insight and tools for those seeking to build Partnership Learning Communities.
Reflection on Partnership working is central to the work entitled “That Which Is Worthy of Love: A Philosophical Framework for Reflection on Staff-Student Partnerships for the Future University”. This work provides a clarity around the intention for Partnership working within the university setting, especially considering the student perspective.