By: Jessi Kwek (Senior Undergraduate Student at EMU and Student Assistant in the Faculty Development Center)

Teaching and Learning Together (TaLT), an initiative of the Faculty Development Center, was launched in response to a concern about students feeling disconnected from campus and their education in a setting severely impacted by COVID-19. This year is the first year of TaLT, and our focus lies in understanding the ways that close student-faculty partnerships impact our campus community, and how these partnerships can be expanded and supported.

To gather this knowledge, our learning community has put in impressive work to learn about the pedagogy of student-faculty partnerships and connect it with their own experiences in both small-group reflections and whole-group discussions. These reflections and discussions have given space for members of this group to share their diverse experiences with partnership in their respective roles and fields, and have produced honest and thought-provoking accounts of what partnership looks like at its best. We wanted to share some results of the discussions so far, and we hope that you will find them as engaging as we do. This blog post has been broken down into three sections, each reflecting different topics participants have read about and discussed. The following bullet points highlight the key points of each discussion. Each bullet point is expanded on in its respective section.

• Characteristics of partnership include mutual trust, understanding, and respect

• Perspectives of non-expert learners are important and valuable in the educational process and should be acknowledged as such

• Opportunities such as research and events held by departments allow students to interact with their educators in more meaningful ways and break down anxieties around power structures in academia

• Partnerships allow students and educators to learn from each other

• Questions about student credibility hinder partnership opportunities, as do constraints on communication, time, and resources

Characteristics of Partnership

Our first full discussion focused on the characteristics of partnership, in which the members of the learning community identified the most important features of successful student-faculty partnerships. Perhaps the most important feature of partnership identified by the group was an establishment of mutual trust, understanding, and respect among all parties involved in the partnership. This means appreciating the roles that both students and faculty play in partnerships both in and outside of the classroom. This is necessary for acknowledging and challenging traditional hierarchies that exist in academia, as students shared that they often feel that their own knowledge and perspectives are not valued in the same way as a result of lack of formal education.

In true partnership, though, the learning community emphasized that the perspective of a non-expert learner is important and valuable and should be treated as such. Both students and faculty shared that employing active listening in both classroom settings and informal conversations can signal that both sides have something important to contribute, and faculty inviting student engagement and feedback can make students feel that they have a more active role in their learning. Similarly, equal engagement with and commitment to the shared goal of the partnership signals a mutual respect for each party’s role in and contribution to the partnership.

Opportunities for and Benefits of Partnership

Our second full group discussion centered on opportunities for partnership that currently exist at EMU. One such opportunity on our campus is the Undergraduate Symposium, which provides students and faculty an opportunity to explore a research or creative project together. Other opportunities for partnerships include events hosted by departments which students are invited to attend. Pancakes with Dr. E, hosted by the Honors College, was one notable example of an event which provided an opportunity for students to interact with faculty in a social setting.

Opportunities like this are important because they can diminish stress around perceived power structures between students and faculty, and they give both students and faculty the opportunity to see each other in a holistic manner, rather than as individuals confined to particular roles within a hierarchical structure. This helps to cultivate the feelings of mutual understanding and respect that were identified as being important to partnerships, and establishes a sense of belonging and community within the institution. Further, these opportunities have the potential to cultivate more opportunities for partnerships, as they shift the understanding of teaching and learning beyond the one-way transfer of knowledge from teacher to student, and allow for both parties to learn from each other.

Barriers to Partnership

Right before the end of the fall term, the learning community considered barriers that exist to effective partnerships. The most prominent barriers identified were assumptions about the credibility of students in partnerships, and rigidness in teaching and learning styles. On an institutional level, the group noted a lack of reference for the structure of partnerships as a barrier. Additionally, partnerships are complicated by a mindset that partnerships are “extra” commitments outside of traditional teaching and learning, which makes full commitment more difficult, particularly at a university where large portions of teachers and students already have major commitments outside of classes. The learning community noted that these barriers lead to students feeling unqualified to participate in partnerships as equals, as well as students and faculty alike feeling uncertain about how to incorporate these partnerships into their existing time, relationships, and resources.

Coming Up

These conversations are just the beginning of a much larger project, which will seek to increase and support opportunities for these partnerships in a way that is truly accessible and beneficial to all faculty and students at EMU. Throughout this semester, the learning community will continue to meet to discuss strategies to overcome these barriers, the importance of student empowerment, and strategies to expand and disseminate the reflections of the group beyond the learning community. The effort to lift student voices and enhance opportunities for more meaningful relationships between students and educators requires a dedicated community, and we at the FDC are very lucky to have the chance to work with a group that is so committed to engaging in these impactful conversations and creating the framework for these partnerships to spread further through our campus community.