Research assistant as partner: Collective leadership to facilitate co-production

Abstract

In this article, we chronicle our experience of student-faculty partnership within a Scholarship of Teaching and Learning design-based research study. We present our experience of partnership in relation to the student-faculty partnership, collective leadership, adult learning and knowledge building literatures. Key characteristics of our student-faculty partnership are recognizingand using intellectual and experiential resources; practicing principles of knowledge building; and differentiating top-down and lateral decision making. We find the affordances of our partnership to be increased productivity, learning from each other and diversity of ideas and perspectives and limitations to be substantial time commitment, underlying beliefs about students’ capabilities and student-faculty ratio to limitations. We conclude by exploring the impact of our partnership on students, faculty and the university.

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“…We engaged in a process that encouraged all members of the design team to learn from one another and contribute ideas. We came into this partnership with different experiences and throughout our collaborative inquiry, we maintained a level of respect for the knowledge and expertise each team member brought with them which allowed us to be coproducers of knowledge (Hill et al, 2019). Our design team members had a robust understanding of protocols for giving and receiving constructive feedback; however, for teams with less experience, we recommend having explicit discussions on how to debrief and provide feedback to maintain a dialectic and open process.…”

Students as partners in digital education: Exploring lecture capture in higher education through partnership between students and learning technologists

“…The experiences of these projects have confirmed that there are a host of benefits to be gained from exploring partnership with students. These include benefits reported by Hill et al (2019), such as supporting a diversity of perspectives across the university, increased productivity, and synergistic learning opportunities for both staff and students. For example, Figure 1 shows the CUSEIP Uni placement student assisting with the trialling of an innovative whiteboard capture technology and cooperative learning between the student and staff.…”

“…For example, Figure 1 shows the CUSEIP Uni placement student assisting with the trialling of an innovative whiteboard capture technology and cooperative learning between the student and staff. Projects such as these can aid our understanding of the complex and messy area of student experience and provide access to diverse perspectives and marginalised voices (Hill et al, 2019). Additionally, the projects developed new and unexpected insights.…”

“…For example, a significant number of students (around 20% on both projects) claimed they sometimes watched lecture recordings in collaborative settings alongside fellow students (Evans & Luke, 2020). As argued by Hill et al (2019), an advantage of partnership working can be increased productivity. This is something we found on our projects whereby students and staff took responsibility for various elements of the project, supporting effective and efficient working and increasing the capacity to achieve a discrete package of work in relatively short timeframes.…”

“…Importantly, the student-staff partnership presented opportunities for staff and students to learn from each other through active participation (Hill et al, 2019). One placement student, Amy, reported in a post-project presentation: "It has been a very valuable experience for me to work alongside staff and see all the work that goes into different aspects of learning for students such as [lecture recording] that I would not have previously thought about."…”