Power and Expertise: Student-Faculty Collaboration in Course Design and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

This essay describes the process of using a team of faculty and undergraduate students to redesign a university course, and outlines the research we conducted on student and faculty learning from the redesign process. We focus particular attention on power relations and issues of expertise, raising questions with implications for faculty who wish to engage students in similar course design projects, regardless of academic discipline, and who partner with undergraduates in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research

Students as co-creators of teaching approaches, course design and curricula: implications for academic developers

Within higher education, students’ voices are frequently overlooked in the design of teaching approaches, courses and curricula. In this paper we outline the theoretical background to arguments for including students as partners in pedagogical planning processes. We present examples where students have worked collaboratively in design processes along with the beneficial outcomes of these examples. Finally we focus on some of the implications and opportunities for academic developers of proposing collaborative approaches to pedagogical planning

How can we confidently judge the extent to which student voice in higher education has been genuinely amplified? A proposal for a new evaluation framework

This article aims to contribute to the development of frameworks for evaluating student voice projects in higher education by offering a critically evaluative account of two student voice projects. Although both projects had been underpinned by the principles of participatory (inclusive) research, one appeared to be more successful than the other in engaging students in a productive or meaningful way. In order to confirm and explain these perceived differences, this paper draws on both student voice and participatory research literature to identify two potentially useful evaluation criteria: reach and fitness for purpose. These criteria are applied to three project factors: aims and assumptions, processes and outcomes to produce an amplitude framework for evaluating student voice in higher education. It is argued that this framework has the potential to enable a rich account of the relative successes and failures of student voice initiatives in higher education

Redressing the balance: inverted hierarchies in the tourism classroom

The research evaluates a collaborative case study to co-create the curriculum for a tourism undergraduate module. In three course design team (CDT) meetings, students selected and discussed topics and learning styles. Qualitative analysis revealed that the students involved strove to be independent learners. They favoured active learning styles and ‘non-vocational’ aspects of tourism. However, university bureaucracy represents a block in the design process. The paper concludes by advocating a more equal relationship between students and tutors. This involves a shift in power relations, inverting traditional hierarchies in which teachers act as gatekeepers of knowledge and students are passive recipients

Power and Expertise: Student-Faculty Collaboration in Course Design and the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning

This essay describes the process of using a team of faculty and undergraduate students to redesign a university course, and outlines the research we conducted on student and faculty learning from the redesign process. We focus particular attention on power relations and issues of expertise, raising questions with implications for faculty who wish to engage students in similar course design projects, regardless of academic discipline, and who partner with undergraduates in Scholarship of Teaching and Learning research