Implement, Impact, Improve – Facts and Future of the “Students-as-Partners” Scheme

Proceedings of The 4th International Conference on Innovative Research in Education

Year: 2022

DOI:

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Implement, Impact, Improve – Facts and Future of the “Students-as-Partners” Scheme

Angela C. T. Tse

ABSTRACT: 

In the Hong Kong Baptist University (HKBU), not only is “Best Student Experience” one of our decade-long strategic priorities, it is also a Christian mission dedicated to infusing our graduates with the caring DNA. This lays the foundations of our revamped 3-tier General Education (GE) programme. The GE programme, which intrinsically concerns every undergraduate as a core graduation requirement, ideally allows all students to serve and be served pedagogically. To strengthen student-staff partnership and the importance of mutual care within the university community, the General Education Office (GEO) launched the Students-as-Partners (SaP) Scheme in 2019. The SaP Scheme carries manifold purposes: 1. to empower students through engaging their voice and efforts in teaching and learning, 2. to offer students and student-partners diverse and innovative learning methods and pedagogies, 3. to enhance student-partners’ experiential learning and service-learning experience, and 4. to create a sense of ownership of learning amongst student-partners conducive to sustainable leadership, creativity and aspiration. Under the GE-SaP scheme, student-partners collaborate with staff-partners (i.e. “course instructors”) as co-designers and co-instructors in GE courses. Being both descriptive and exploratory, this paper seeks to share how the Scheme is organised, in what ways student-partners and staff-partners collaborate to facilitate interactive pedagogies, and how the quality of the Scheme is ensured. At the same time, difficulties faced during the implementation and challenges to expand the Scheme after reaching a plateau will also be highlighted, with a view to inviting audience to contribute ideas to good practices in student-staff partnership.

keywords: students-as-partners; student-teacher partnership; innovative pedagogy; whole person education.