Students as partners: lessons from student perspectives during COVID-19

Higher Education is in a state of flux. The heavily nuanced impacts of the novel coronavirus (COVID-19) pandemic threatens the quality of learning, teaching and research with many institutions responding with a rapid digitalisation of procedures (Butler-Henderson et al., 2020; Crawford at al., 2020). Academic leadership is currently crucial, and researchers across the world are collaborating online to present innovative ways to combat the challenges presented (Fernandez & Shaw, 2020). Preliminary research into the specific impacts on students calls for a targeted and considered response; although this response seems to be missing one crucial perspective, the students.

Collaborating less and socialising entirely online, this new student experience affects psychological wellbeing drastically; promoting the question as to how online studies impacts students (Elmer et al., 2020). So far, this impact has only been addressed once from the student perspective; measuring levels of anxiety in relation to social and economic factors (Cao et al., 2020). The aim of this presentation is to showcase student perspectives; and it draws upon current work addressing the current lack of student representation through collective self-ethnographies from students in Tasmania and Singapore, as well the collaborative processes behind the University of Tasmania’s University College innovative assessment methods. We adopt the Students as Partners approach; a collaborative process that fosters reciprocal relationships wherein students and academics work together to address the processes they share (Mercer-Mapstone, 2020). The findings from our study provide a snapshot of how institutionalised responses impact students’ motivations to learn, explore new opportunities, and flourish.