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Education Development Toolkit

Principle 3: Partnership and Co-Creation

Graphic of four hands placed on top of each other from above

We must work with students as partners to enable co-creation of the student experience, with staff and students’ different inputs and insights equally valued. Partnership activity should be purposeful and enhancement-focused; every student should have a voice to enable them to be co-creators of an improved educational experience, whether via representation or other feedback mechanisms, and students should understand how their feedback is used and valued. In practice, partnership means engaging students throughout a process so they can be part of the problem-framing and solution-finding. This contrasts with approaches where solutions to student feedback are created by staff and then presented to students as a fait accompli. The Student Rep Scheme at Cardiff supports staff to engage in constant dialogue with students, to gather input on ideas and solutions.

Sustainability Tip

It is important to understand co-creation as participatory, active and reflective – it is something that will evolve with the learning process and can lead to a range of outcomes. It is vital that students feel that their opinions are valued and have impact. This supports learners to become confident in taking responsibility for their own learning and promotes agency. This in turn aids learners to develop the sustainability principles through their actions and supports development towards achieving the 17 well-being goals

For Education Development, you should consider what type of partnership is going to be established depending on the task at hand. Student Staff Panels should work in partnership when looking at enhancement activity, data on student voice, and action plans.

Inclusivity Tip

Be conscious in your strategy for student partnership or co-creation. A suite of research suggests that: ‘the (s)election of students includes a tendency to involve students who are already engaged or advantaged in some way, potentially exacerbating existing inequalities and not tackling lower levels of student engagement. This runs the risk of creating a small ‘elite’ of super-engaged students and co-creation projects being perceived as only for privileged students’ (Bovill 2020).

Major changes to programmes and the proposal of new programmes must have student involvement from the start of the process. Given the length of time these processes can take and the complexity of the documentation, it may be sensible to set up a smaller representative panel of students to be part of the process, rather than using a larger group such as a Student Staff Panel. In addition, the Student Champions Scheme offers support to all areas of the University to engage students in projects and tasks (see below).

Mini Deeper Dive into Partnership and Co-Creation

The Student Champions are a group of paid diverse students who are recruited from all levels of study and disciplines, who work in partnership with staff across the university on a variety of tasks and projects throughout the academic year to shape and improve the student experience.

To ensure Champions are fully equipped to shape the student experience, they receive training in data collection, communication strategies, student engagement, video creation and data analysis.

How can the Student Champions work in partnership with me?

Student champions can work with you by:

  • creating and developing resources in a variety of areas within schools and professional services
  • supporting data collection through the creation and facilitation of student surveys and focus groups
  • providing a personal perspective and insight of experiences at university to shape decision making and resources
  • supporting curriculum and software development by trialling new initiatives and working with staff to review and implement recommendations for improvement
  • working with colleagues on communications strategies and tactics, including social media presence and video production.

To engage with the Scheme, please contact cardiffstudentchampions@cardiff.ac.uk