Students as partners

A new and stronger perspective on good education is the promise of VU's new Students-As-Partners programme. After-hours discussions, co-determination, or having students create their own(s) education are just a few ways student involvement can contribute to better education. However, engaging students also has its challenges. How and where do you find the right students? How do you deal with rewards and the rapid turnover of students? How do you build the relationship between employee and student?

The VU Students-As-Partners program addresses these challenges and supports teachers and students to improve education together. By sharing experiences, establishing a vision and offering training, we strengthen the quality of education and contribute to student development.

Lessons learned
There are already some examples of initiatives through which experiences can be shared, such as A Broader Mind at VU Amsterdam, Springlab at AUMC and the Honours course Rebuilding Education. Students are already fully involved in these initiatives, with this collaboration going beyond teaching evaluations.

Getting started with students as partners yourself?
Are you unfamiliar with Students-As-Partners or in doubt if you are already involved in this? Often, without being aware of it, you have already come a long way. Within Student-As-Partners there are different partner roles that are distinguished. These range from informing, employee to student, to a partnership in which student and employee act on the same level¹.

^{1. Healey, M., & Healey, R. L. (2019). Student engagement through partnership: A guide and Update to the advance HE framework (04).}

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