Students as Partners

i. Creating equity when converting a course to contain integrative learning assessments : 6 steps, 5 headaches, 3 major lessons learned and endless (great) surprises Presenters: William Ju, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, Human Biology Program Sabina Trebinjac (Undergraduate student, Human Biology) Georgia Hadjis (Undergraduate student, Human Biology) Dan Xuan Mona Wang (Undergraduate student, Human Biology) Kate Rzadki (Teaching Assistant, Human Biology and Institute of Medical Sciences)

Although there is an increasing need to develop resources that incorporate integrated learning experiences within courses, the impact that these types of experiences have on students who are employed or have responsibilities outside of the classroom potentially create inequities. According to a 2010 Statistics Canada report (see link below), between 40-50% of post-secondary students were part of the workforce during the regular school year, with an average of 16 hours per week at work in addition to time in the classroom. In this session, my students and I will highlight how we inverted a traditional research based seminar course to bring industry partners into the classroom, converted classroom lecture time to model a work place team environment during class times and generated a capstone project that incorporated all the elements of integrated learning required and evaluated by our industry partners. By not only changing the dynamics of how students and industry partners interact (using an inverted model of both in-person demonstrations and online discussions), but also creating a student lead collaborative online project assessed by industry partners, we developed a scalable and adaptable course structure that incorporates equity and integrative learning for senior level students in a seminar based course. This session will focus on the lessons learned during this adaptation of a traditional course, the student view of the learning outcomes and how this could be applied to any course.

Reference: https://www.statcan.gc.ca/pub/75-001-x/2010109/article/11341-eng.htm

ii. Student-consultants as a model for leveraging the design mindset to enable innovation in course curriculum

Presenters: Nouman Ashraf, Assistant Professor, Rotman School of Management Taylor Kim, Research Associate, Rotman School of Management

In this Lightning Talk, participants will learn about the student-consultant model and how it has been used to enable learning in a new program for Rotman Commerce students: Consulting for Impact.

In the Winter 2018 semester, 15 BComm students were selected to participate in the Consulting for Impact initiative, where students provided consulting services to a non-for-profit client, Daily Bread Food Bank. The outcome of this initiative is to identify a dimension of the organization’s mission that could be deepened through process improvement. The Consulting for Impact sessions is a collaboration with Lily Abediny at the Rotman Commerce Student Life Office, Professor Nouman Ashraf, and Research Associate, Taylor Kim.

This program utilized a student-consultant model to enhance relatability and engagement with the undergraduate students. Second year MBA student, Taylor Kim co-facilitated the Consulting for Impact program, drawing from her experience as a graduate of a parallel course in the MBA curriculum. As a student consultant, she used design-thinking methodologies to prototype this new initiative.

This student-consultant model is an example of the model that is described in the work of Bovill, Cook-Sather and Felten (2011). Through this student-consultant model, students co-design the curriculum to deepen the learning that takes place between peers and instructor. In this model, the faculty’s role is to enable agency in the students. In turn, students develop self-efficacy and grow into the belief that they are the “holders and creators of knowledge” (Bernal, 2002).

Through this session, the presenters will share their experiences of integrative learning in two ways: Firstly, how to integrate the learning of graduate students into designing and delivering the pedagogy to undergraduate students. Secondly, how to integrate meaningful community initiates into the learning outcomes of the program.

References:

Bernal, D. D. (2002). Critical Race Theory, Latino Critical Theory, and Critical Raced-Gendered Epistemologies: Recognizing Students of Color as Holders and Creators of Knowledge. Qualitative Inquiry.

Bovill, C., Cook-Sather, A., & Felten, P. (2011). Students as co‐creators of teaching approaches, course design, and curricula: implications for academic developers. International Journal for Academic Development, 133-145.

iii. Engaging Students as Partners in Program Assessment

Presenters: Alison Gibbs, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, Statistical Sciences Saneea Mustafa, Undergraduate Student, Department of Statistical Sciences Jessie Richards, Curriculum Developer, Office of the Vice-Provost, Innovations in Undergraduate Education Bethany White, Associate Professor, Teaching Stream, Department of Statistical Sciences

The Department of Statistical Sciences was embarking on a major curriculum renewal initiative when a team of faculty, staff, and students attended a four-day institute on engaging students as partners in higher education. We began the institute with the broad goal of involving students in the curriculum renewal process in a significant way, and ended with a concrete plan for a students-as-partners project to assess the impact of the curriculum renewal.

Student-staff partnerships can take many forms but must “go beyond listening to the student voice and engage students as co-learners, co-researchers, co-inquirers, co-developers, and co-designers” (Healey et al, 2016). We believe the nature of student partnership strongly supports the values of work-integrated learning. While academic settings may not be typical workplaces for most Statistics graduates, our student partners are applying their developing understanding of statistics to evaluate the extent to which program learning outcomes are supported throughout the program. They are developing skills in collaboration, teamwork and professionalism, while critically reflecting on the impact of their program. In doing so, they are gaining valuable experience to take into the workplace.

We will describe how we formed a program assessment committee with equal representation of faculty/staff and students; what we have learned from the literature and our own partnership; the benefits for all parties; and our next steps.

By the end of this session, participants will be able to describe how student-staff partnerships may provide meaningful, integrated learning experiences and generate ideas for introducing partnerships in their respective units.

References: Bovill, C. (2014). An investigation of co-created curricula within higher education in the UK, Ireland and the USA. Innovations in Education and Teaching International, 51(1), 15–25.

Bovill, C., Cook-Sather, A., Felten, P., Millard, L., & Moore-Cherry, N. (2016). Addressing potential challenges in co-creating learning and teaching: Overcoming resistance, navigating institutional norms and ensuring inclusivity in student-staff partnerships. Higher Education, 71, 195-208.

Cook-Sather, A., Bovill, C., Felten, P. (2014). Program-level approaches to student-faculty partnerships. Engaging students as partners in learning and teaching: A guide for faculty. San Francisco: Jossey-Bass. Healey, M., Flint, A., and Harrington, K. (2016) Students as Partners: Reflections on a Conceptual Model, Teaching and Learning Inquiry 4(2).