For the past year, I’ve learned from Students as Partners praxis. SaP is an approach used internationally within teaching and learning scholarship that is an outgrowth of the undergraduate research movement. As Mercer-Mapstone et al. (2017) write in a literature review of SaP scholarship for The International Journal of Students as Partners, by grounding SaP labor in a “values-based ethos” students and faculty shift to “co-teachers, co-inquirers, curriculum co-creators, and co-learners across all facets of the educational enterprise” (p. 2). Moreover, Werder et al. (2012) identified SaP as a threshold concept in educational development as it constitutes a “transformational, irreversible, and discursive” (p. 34) experience for students and faculty alike. Such an approach has gained traction in countries like Canada, Australia, the Netherlands, and the U.K.
At the University of North Georgia, I’ve worked with student-partners on assessing a redesigned general education writing course and worked with student-partners to design a signature experience within an English capstone course.
One student-partner I worked and learned with is pursuing a graphic design minor. Kellie Keeling has been instrumental in helping create visuals that capture our work. Below is an image she created. The quote in the poster originally appeared in English. The quote comes from the wonderful book Pedagogical Partnerships by Cook-Sather, Bahti, and Ntem and published by Elon University’s Center for Engaged Learning‘s open access book series. Another student-partner on our team, Zoe Phalen, translated the quote into Spanish in hopes of reaching a broader audience.
As we continue learning and laboring together, we are committed to finding additional visual ways to engage our audiences.
J. Michael Rifenburg 