Student as partners: The missing link in digital curriculum design

Background/context. For centuries, the methods of teaching and learning have remained relatively unbothered, with academics being
the knowledge ‘holders’ with information being transmitted passively to students. However, Student as Partners (SaP) as a philosophical
and ideological movement has disrupted both the status quo and traditional structures of the institution by providing power, purpose,
and provisions to, for, and with students.
The initiative/practice. At the very least, SaP stands for greater student expression, voice, and representation and at its best, it provides
an emancipatory passage where students enact and embody the changes they wish to see in their classrooms. Within the Australian
Higher Education landscape, SaP have developed considerable inroads into teaching and learning. However, missing from the SaP ecology
is how teaching specialists, learning designers and academic support staff can co-design, support, and implement a student partnership
model with academics.
Methods of evaluative data collection and analysis. Using a critical-participatory approach, this research follows the design,
development, and implementation of a SaP contextualised framework that was used over a three-year period with twelve different
academics in language learning within sixteen different courses. This phenomenological study provides and evaluates a nine-step process
on how students, academics, and learning designers came together to develop authentic change in their blended classroom
environments.
Evidence of outcomes and effectiveness. The model catalysed the largest school-wide adoption of student partnership within a large
Australian university and the co-design model being presented will allow other universities with little to no SaP experience to follow.