Practical things to try

So when I started thinking about how to set up a student-staff partnership programme, I’ll be honest, I didn’t know where to begin, but I built a plan and it wasn’t a perfect one, but it was something that I could start with and then grow over time. So first I had to think about where the programme was going to live. For us, it made sense to host it in our Education office because it meant that we could reach both our academic and our professional support staff. Then I asked, who’s gonna lead this? I took it on myself because it nicely sat with my interests around inclusive higher education. But I quickly realised the value of building a team of those interested in partnership working.

So I mapped out all the key stakeholders, course leaders, support staff, students, and thought really carefully about how to engage those stakeholders. We sat down together, we defined the aims to enhance learning, foster inclusion, and give students that real world experience, and that really helped us think about the strategic importance of what we were doing. We decided to run the programme over a whole academic year because that gave us long enough to build those relationships, but also a bit of flexibility to adapt over time. Promotion was definitely a learning curve. We tried lots of strategies, newsletters, staff briefings, student networks, and so on to spread the word. Again, it wasn’t perfect, it took time, but eventually we started to build that interest in the programme.

Project proposals were invited from staff and we asked that those proposals outlined the project, the aims and objectives, the role that the student partner would take in that project, the anticipated number of hours, and also a kind of expected timeline. Funding was a bit tight. We did manage to secure an internal budget and we used that to pay our student partners for their time. And making those positions paid was really important to us because we wanted to make the roles attractive to the most kind of economically disadvantaged students in our community. Those that need to work to fund their studies.

We built in evaluation from the start, we tracked progress, gathered lots of feedback, and this really has helped us to learn and improve over time, and we celebrated successes. Even those small wins, we made sure that our students really felt valued and heard as we went through the programme. And students themselves actually helped us to shape how we work. So they suggested improvements and some have even proposed their own projects, which has been really beautiful to see. So looking back, I think we didn’t have all the answers at the beginning, but we did have a vision around what our partnership programme was and what it could do. So if you are thinking about starting a partnership programme, I’d say definitely do it. It isn’t about perfection, it’s about that collaboration and learning as you go through. In the activity below, there’s 12 key points for you to consider.

So in the second activity, we look at how to go about recruiting a student partner team. At Southampton Solent University, we’ve learned a lot about what it takes to recruit student partners effectively and meaningfully. Here’s some of the things we’ve learned along the way. First of all, we treat our student partners as paid positions, and we use our internal campus job platform to advertise these positions each academic year. So it’s a formal process because we want our students to feel valued and their contributions acknowledged. So we go into teaching sessions to talk to students directly about the opportunity, and we also make that face-to-face connection in other spaces at the university to spark interest in the roles. We don’t just limit applications to one subject area. What matters most is that student perspective, not the discipline of their degree programme. But that said, we really put a lot of emphasis on recruiting students at level five or above because we recognise that it requires some experience of being a student to be an effective student partner.

We also make a point of encouraging applications from our most underrepresented groups, so particularly students from Black, Asian, minority, and ethnic backgrounds. We really want our student partnership programme to reflect the diversity of our student body, and that really starts with that inclusive recruitment. So students apply with a CV and a covering letter, and we shortlist based on our personal specification. Shortlisted candidates come for a 15-minute interview with us where we go through a set of structured questions. And even when students are unsuccessful in their applications, we make sure that we give them really good constructive feedback. I think the biggest lesson that we’ve learned in the recruitment process is that students don’t need previous experience. What really matters is their passion for partnership. And if that passion’s there from day one, then we can create the opportunities within the programme for them to develop themselves and grow.

So when you’re setting up a student partner programme, one of the most important things to get right is the induction and training process. It’s not just about ticking boxes. It’s about building that confidence and capability and sense of belonging to the programme. At Southampton Solent University, we’ve developed a structured and supportive approach that’s evolved over time. First, we start with our essentials training, and this includes GDPR, Prevent, equality and diversity, and Health & Safety training. It’s delivered asynchronously online by our people and development team. Then we move into our Solent student partner induction, and this is synchronous in-person sessions led by myself as the programme lead, and also our student partner alumni.

We cover everything from partnership values, we share past project stories, challenges, opportunities, and we also do a skills audit. We also talk about how students get paid, what the projects will involve, and also how they will have opportunity to grow professionally. Training doesn’t just stop after that induction. Student partners receive project-specific skills development on a needs basis, whether it’s software, data analysis, or something else. And this is delivered by our individual project leads, either in person or online. And we bring all of our student partners together for monthly team meetings, and these sessions are a really important space for reflection, peer support, and troubleshooting. And as students grow in confidence, they start to lead part of those training sessions themselves.

So all of our training is mandatory and paid because we believe it’s really important that partnership is a professional commitment, and students really deserve to be recognised for the time and effort that they put into the programme. And what we found is really when students feel prepared, supported, and valued, they really thrive in the partnership roles. In the text below, there’s a structure for you to consider in terms of inducting and training student partners.