{"id":4344,"date":"2017-05-24T12:57:31","date_gmt":"2017-05-24T02:57:31","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/sydney.edu.au\/education-portfolio\/ei\/teaching@sydney\/?p=4344"},"modified":"2017-05-31T10:55:00","modified_gmt":"2017-05-31T00:55:00","slug":"students-partners-educational-innovation","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/educational-innovation.sydney.edu.au\/teaching@sydney\/students-partners-educational-innovation\/","title":{"rendered":"Students as Partners in Educational Innovation"},"content":{"rendered":"
\"The
The OCuLaR team (left to right), Marlena Lutz-Hughes, Georgia Carr, Nick Enfield (project leader) and Gus Wheeler. Image 2017, Pamela Bra\u00f1as, by permission.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n

OCuLaR, the Online Core Linguistics Resource, is one of the 2016 strategic educational innovation grants currently in the final stages of development.<\/p>\n

Professor Nick Enfield<\/a> is leading the project and made the decision to develop the resource in partnership with three students who had completed 3rd or 4th year of the Linguistics major; Georgia Carr, Marlena Lutz-Hughes and Gus Wheeler. All are tutoring in the Department in 2017, which will provide them with the opportunity to experience teaching with the resource they have co-created and see the student response to it.<\/p>\n

The self-study resource contains problem sets at varying levels of difficulty, with appropriate scaffolding to help undergraduate students to develop linguistic problem-solving abilities. It will be available consistently to students across their entire candidature in Linguistics.<\/p>\n

\"Title\u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0 \u00a0\u00a0 \"Title<\/p>\n

Students as collaborators<\/strong><\/h4>\n

While it\u2019s not unusual to consult with students by asking them to review materials created by academics, or to provide feedback, partnerships involving co-creation of content<\/strong> require higher levels of responsibility, depth of understanding and creativity from the students involved. Not to mention many more hours of input. Unsurprisingly, being paid for the work<\/strong> is an important ingredient in getting the appropriate level of output and commitment, as well as making students feel valued and responsible for the project outcomes. University strategic educational grant<\/a> funding<\/a> allowed the students to be contracted to be part of the team on this project.<\/p>\n

To be worth undertaking for both academics and students, partnership projects need to be authentic<\/strong>, adding real value to the University.\u00a0 In the case of OCuLaR, Nick and the tutors see enormous benefits for both the undergraduate students and themselves, of having a database of well-designed problems, more accurate and consistent than before.<\/p>\n

The students have been developing the linguistic problem sets from legacy materials in the department as well as sourcing additional problems that complement the existing curriculum. As they learned to translate the problems to the online context, they have gained experience collaborating with the educational designers from the Educational Innovation team and with the copyright officers from the University Library.<\/p>\n

Team member qualities
\n<\/strong><\/h4>\n

Student<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Nick believes the most important qualities for students taking part in partnership projects are foremost, a love for the discipline, <\/strong>then being reliable, efficient, creative and smart<\/strong>.<\/p>\n

He is aware that the students, due to their relative closeness to their undergraduate years and their emerging dual understanding from both the learner and teacher perspectives provide him with \u201cmuch-needed insights.\u201d<\/p>\n

Academic<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

He believes that the foremost qualities for an academic leading a group of students as partners are trust, <\/strong>along with the ability to listen <\/strong>and to ensure that lines of communication are open <\/strong>all the time; also clarity of reasoning <\/strong>to navigate the multiple ideas on offer and guide decision-making.<\/p>\n

When guiding students in partnership projects, Nick warns against perfectionism and micromanagement which may be demotivating to the team, saying \u201cYou want outcomes to be excellent, but at a certain point there is little significant difference [in choosing one option over another].\u00a0 \u2026 Choose your battles.\u00a0 If you are worried about losing control you possibly shouldn\u2019t be doing it.\u201d<\/p>\n

For their part, the students, independently praised Nick\u2019s openness, clear justifications for his decisions and ability to listen to their point of view.\u00a0 Knowing they were able to safely challenge Nick and have their justification for the point heard was very important in establishing themselves as intellectual collaborators, rather than feeling contracted to carry out a preordained task.<\/p>\n

\"Professor<\/p>\n

\u00a0They\u2019ve had a lot of creative input and I\u2019ve been able to trust their judgment on a lot of calls that we\u2019ve had to make.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

– Professor Nick Enfield, Project Leader<\/p>\n

Shared values for successful partnerships
\n<\/strong><\/h4>\n

The Higher Education Academy, UK in Engagement Through Partnership<\/a> (Healey, Flint and Harrington 2014, pp. 14-15) proposes shared values that underpin successful student-academic partnerships.\u00a0 These are strongly present in the OCuLaR team and include:<\/p>\n