Student-Faculty Partnership

Typically faculty teach to students. What happens if we framed the task differently, aiming to teach with students? What new possibilities emerge when students and faculty work together to co-design classes and curricula?

Co-create UVA, a collaboration between the Center for Teaching Excellence and the student-led initiative ReinventED Lab, offered a platform for faculty and students to explore these questions and reimagine teaching and learning together. Co-create UVA's motto? "Students are the most important and least consulted stakeholders in education – let’s change the paradigm and co-create education together.”

Our Beliefs

Part of a burgeoning national movement, student-faculty partnerships are built on the assumption that learners and teachers can "contribute equally, although not necessarily in the same ways, to curricular or pedagogical conceptualization, decision making, implementation, investigation, or analysis" (Cook-Sather, et. al. 2014). Research on student-faculty partnerships shows significant benefits for all participants; students report deeper engagement in courses and increased metacognitive awareness, while faculty report an awareness of students’ experiences that transform how they think about and practice teaching.

Activities

Trained in the Design Thinking methodology, Keaton Wadzinski, ReinventED’s founder, initially partnered with the CTE to offer Design Thinking workshops for students and faculty interested in reimagining higher education together. From 2015-2017, with a grant from the Jefferson Trust, the Co-create UVA team trained cohorts of undergraduate students to consult with faculty during the CTE’s Course Design Institute, offered grants to students and faculty co-designing courses, and hosted a variety of workshops and lunch conversations to harness students' perspectives on teaching and learning. This 3-minute video recorded at the CTE’s 2017 Innovations in Pedagogy Summit showcases some of Co-create UVA’s work and impact.

In addition to our local reach, Co-create UVA presented nationally at conferences, including the AAC&U, the POD Network in Higher Education, and at the Conference in Higher Education Pedagogy, and traveled to Toronto for the Student as Partners conference. We were also invited to present our work at James Madison University and co-authored “At the threshold: A case study of a partnership between a student organization and an educational development center” in the International Journal for Students as Partners.

Although no longer a standalone program, Co-create UVA’s legacy lives on at the CTE in multiple ways, such as through our:

• Thrive grants that offer funding for faculty wanting to partner with students to co-design courses.
• CTE undergraduate consultants, who are permanently integrated into our consultation program, providing feedback to instructors during our Course Design Institute and offering consultations during the academic year alongside our faculty and graduate student consultants. They also support our programming as educational development partners by authoring articles, hosting student-faculty lunch conversations, serving on panels, and supporting the design of workshops and resources.