Fostering quality assurance partnerships between staff and students: creating leadership skills in student representatives
Abstract
A key issue in effective internal quality assurance (IQA) is active involvement of different stakeholders. The role of student representatives is formalized in most institutes for higher education but research indicates that students could need training to learn to deal with power differentials and giving feedback in difficult settings. The aim of the current study was to optimize the input of students within the IQA process by making them true partners to the staff they worked with.
In a mixed method design we evaluated students’ perspectives on their role as student representatives. 32 students from three programmes participated in the study. Results demonstrated that after the training they were able to demonstrate leadership behaviour and improved feedback skills. Suggestion for improvement was completing the feedback loop towards students during the IQA process. Future research should focus on further optimizing the role of the student representative.
This paper was presented at EQAF and reflects the views of the named authors only.
