Departmental action teams: Empowering students as change agents in academic departments

Abstract

Supporting and sustaining positive educational change is an area of increasing focus in higher education and remains a persistent challenge. Using student partnerships is one promising way to help promote these much-needed changes. This case study focuses on Departmental Action Teams (DATs), which are groups of faculty, students, and staff working together in the same department to make sustainable improvements to undergraduate education. Here we focus on DATs from four different departments, across two research-intensive universities in the USA, to draw attention to the important roles that students play as change agents in these groups. We also reflect upon the inherent challenges in building partnerships that incorporate meaningful power sharing to effect educational change

Planning for co-curricular design-student voice, power dynamics and threshold learning: A thematic analysis of the student perspective

“…It also becomes a means of preparing students for collegial, professional relationships and relationships with consumers. The principles of SaP align with what consumers are seeking from their healthcare experience (Healey et al, 2016;Reinholz et al, 2020). Engaging students in a SaP-based curriculum codesign model may help students adapt to an evolving and complex workplace (Lubicz-Nawrocka, 2018).…”

“…However, health care professionals are educated in organisations that often model hierarchical structures, perpetuating, rather than challenging, the existing systems. Through students becoming stakeholders in their education and engaging collaboratively with teaching staff, there is the potential for undergraduate health students to develop skills to become change agents in both their education and the provision of future healthcare (Healey et al, 2016;Reinholz et al, 2020).…”

Leveraging Student–Faculty–Staff Partnerships to Implement Inclusive Curricular Reform in Chemistry Education

“…In many ways, the structure of CARAC is similar to that of a Departmental Action Team (DAT) model, − in which faculty, staff, and students form a working group to develop sustainable departmental change recommendations. The members of a DAT are identified based on expertise, investment in departmental change, as well as the diversity of roles, perspectives, and identities that they contribute.…”