 Thank you for attending in this presentation. My name is Fernando Angoli from the Irish University Association. I'm a student associate intern in the enhancing video teaching and learning in Irish universities project. So I've been making a presentation on student staff partnership, which is a case from our student interns where I am part of the internship. So first, I want to start by just giving you a brief overview of our internship model. So in the project, when the project started, we never had student interns and they were just staff working in the various universities, the partner universities. And sometimes in 2019 actually in November, there was a need of hiring a student associate intern with the core objective of the student intern bringing student voices to the project and being actively involved in the creation of digital resources to support online teaching and learning. With the success of involving this one intern, then there was this urge and this, you know, out of the importance and the value that the intern brought to the project. Then there was a need to expand the internship model for every partner university to have at least an intern working with a member of staff. So the internship is based on this structure whereby the student has to be currently enrolled and actively enrolled students, but not a student who has, you know, completed college and the students are working 15 hours per week, which is 60 hours per week flexibly per month, I mean 60 hours per month flexibly, because there are some months that are very heavy for students and there are some months that are light. So depending on, on how the college timetable looks like, there was that kind of flexibility and there was a payment of 13.91 euros per hour. And each university had at least one intern, there are some partner universities that had even more than one intern in their local university. And the interns work collaboratively with the project staff. And also we saw this urge where there was a growth of this collaboration between interns. So just giving you the structure in terms of how the model looked like. So at the Irish universities association, that's where the EDTL project is hosted. And now that this partner, there's the eight partner universities that are under, that the project is being implemented in and every university has a staff and has a student intern working with the staff collaboratively. So at the Irish universities association at the project, the higher level of the project we have a member of staff and also a student intern. So the internship model started with an intern at the higher level, then, you know, out of the work that this intern did back then in 2019, we saw it important to expand the scheme to the partner university. So as you can see in 2019 we started with one intern and the reason why I'm projecting this screen is that so that you can just see that where the project has come from and the kind of diversity and, you know, like the kind of interns that we had like this the first intern was a postgraduate student with a background of journalism so that they should just, it's not, you know, we didn't only hire interns from technical fields myself, I'm an anthropologist and I'm in the school of business. There was a diverse, you know, like a mix of undergraduate and postgraduate and, you know, students from law, medicine, business like myself and anthropology, digital marketing, data science. And also we had like 14 female students and seven male students so there was all this kind of diversity because all these different groups of students bring in different perspectives and three international students and 18 local students myself I'm an international student from Kenya. What are we trying to do actually because the purpose of the internship was actually to, for the students to create a digital teaching and learning resources that reasoned with a student perspective just from their perspective and to support the staff and to work collaboratively with the staff. At times in 2020 we decided okay fine, why can't we do an evaluation of the student internship scheme. And that's where this great idea of having a qualitative study to understand the student internship scheme came up and the core objective of just to understand the role of students as partners in digital teaching and learning. And specifically we were looking at documenting how students contribute when they are engaged as active partners in the digital teaching and learning space, and also just trying to understand the benefits. And, you know, like how students benefit when they're actively engaged in the student partnership space in digital and learning, and also as a bonus like we were trying to understand the value that the project added to our student intern. So why was this important or why is this important so the first thing is that this the project has been running like for quite a long time and we had a lot of informal lessons so it was important that these lessons are documented so that they can be referred to in the future. And just so that we can have, you know, future user centered approaches to teaching and learning, you know, because more often you know we design programs for students without involving them and this was very important. It's a program where there's a project where students are creating resources for themselves and they're being involved actively. So how can we transfer these skills to other projects and to other areas where we involve students. So I will invite two of my fellow interns, Katharina Katz and Schneid Muni, just to share their experience over to you, Schneid. Thank you very much for accepting to be part of this panel. So welcome to Alt 2022 on the screen. So I would like you to share with us your overall experience as a student intern in the project, just trying to tell us what are some of the things that you know you collaborated on with staff. How did you collaborate with the staff, like what worked, what did not work and what would be the barriers or what were some of the barriers of, you know, you as a student engaging with staff or what would be the like the barriers of engaging with staff and just what worked generally. Okay, yeah. So, I was student associate intern for the fire university associate enhancing teaching and learning project this year in Donut City University in Ireland. So the way it worked my collaboration with staff, I mainly worked with the teaching enhancements unit in DCU and I worked with Rob Lenny and Suzanne stone mainly. And so we would have a meeting every week and we would discuss kind of goals for the week. I'm looking at different initiatives that the teaching enhancements either already started or we're looking to start during the year. So some of the things that we worked on, we did a project called DCG 10. So this was some kind of informal learning sessions where students could come online in this space called gather, which had like a sort of pixelated fields. Well, some like sort of zoom video colleges and we would go through different things to look at like how to use Excel or how to make use like videos within like lectures and assigning content that sort of thing. Some of the other things we did. We did a weekly to tips in the students union newsletter for the virtual our virtual learning environment service loop or Moodle. Continue the digital project by creating an Instagram for it where we posted twightly tips and engage students through that. And we've also been working on our little skills hope repository site, which is called the skills.ie, which I based off a spreadsheet kind of produced by all the staff in the teaching enhancement unit. I got a WordPress like populated posts and it's aimed at both students and staff and give them resources on a different digital companies and fees that work for both students and staff and are aimed at different people. So what worked is, I think, stuff like creating the Instagram for the digital project really worth because that reached out to students where they were kind of on the Instagram is probably the most used social media for students stuff. We're able to engage with students really directly that way. And I've enjoyed the experience of being a student and working with stuff. Often I think one of the barriers can be that it can feel intimidating to give recommendations to staff. Because you kind of on using you don't have that much insight as a student, but you have more insight and you think and I think I was able to realize that I had so much more to learn about digital learning than I thought I did because sometimes you can think, you know everything already but it's actually more to learn. Sometimes what could be difficult is, especially when we were doing the digital sessions, we did both online and in person online. Like there would usually be I think about a max of about seven people, sometimes more than three or four who get a lot out of sessions and these people would usually be coming back every week and we like that same mature students and international students who I think got a lot out. But we kind of struggled to bring more students into it because I think sometimes it can be hard to convince students to extra curricularly like see things that influence their learning. So it kind of when we did, I found the online session were better than the in person sessions. It was easier to get people to catch up onto the online sessions. Which, yeah, it can be like difficult to kind of get students who think they already know what they're doing like like third or finally used to like engage in developing their digital skills. But I think it's a really important thing. I think as well as I mentioned one of the barriers can be students in nurse for giving recommendations as an interest sometimes I would find it difficult to kind of align my skills so I could work consistently on projects and I would have loved to have had more time to meet with other interns. So I think in general I really enjoyed working as an internet really felt like my opinion was valued by the stuff and I felt like I got to do a lot, learn a lot about building website, working on in from building a following there and I got to give some of the Digitown sessions. I got to lead some of them myself and present them with a really valuable experience, getting to explain digital learning concepts to other students because I felt like I learned more about them while I was teaching them to other people. So I think yeah, it was great. And I really enjoyed being a part of the enhancing digital team and learning project over this last year. Sorry, I think I was on mute. So thank you. So just to like to wrap up, and if you are to recommend or to give recommendations, what would be some of the recommendations that you will, you know, give out on, you know, the best ways of engaging with students as partners. You know, based on the experiences that you've learned from the project. Yeah, well, I think I guess some of the recommendations I would give it definitely kind of reach to students as early as possible in the year to see if they're interested in being involved in like initiatives like this. I know the enhancing digital teaching and learning initiative is sort of wrapping up now, but I don't think having more initiatives like this, either by the Irish university associations or by the individual universities will be a really good thing. Because like I said, I think people don't really know how much they have to learn. And I think people are enthusiastic to learn more about these things. And yeah, so I suppose kind of give bring up more like create more of these initiatives reach out to students early often and kind of keep checking back and keep recruiting more people. And yeah, just kind of, I think I think students are more trusted sometimes and people might think so kind of just don't be afraid to kind of keep developing those initiatives and give them opportunities to develop their skills when staff and students are working together. And I think students will gain a lot from that and so will staff. If that makes sense. Okay, okay, so thank you very much for your insights and yeah, thanks. Okay, thank you, Cathy for joining us in art 2022 virtually from. Ireland. Yeah, well, close to me. Okay, thank you. So Cathy, you, you are part of the like the first batch of the interns and who served like for a really long time in the project so can you tell us about your experience in the project mostly around them. What were your roles and then like, you know, how did things work out. How did you collaborate with the staff and how how was it like just generally in terms of what were the barriers and what are some of the things that facilitated the student staff partnership. Okay, so, um, yeah, so I'd love to talk a little bit about that. It's been, I think like two years now since I was the student intern, the student miss me new associate intern from the University of Minuth, and which was the role that I participated in the EDT L enhancing teacher teaching and learning project, which, you know, encompassed also universities beyond. And so I was kind of like the representative or one of the student representatives from Minuth University and with me, there were a few other interns as well from a new university. So we started off, I think we were two interns from Minuth University and then a third one joined us from a different kind of department or different educational backgrounds than the first two interns were. And I was also, you know, being the first intern, I came from, you know, anthropology, so I came very much from a social science kind of background. And the second intern who joined quite, you know, we've met the same time. She came from a business background. So there was throughout the whole, you know, year that we worked as a student interns part of the project. There were kind of, you know, and there was an insurance or kind of like a strive towards having students from different educational backgrounds as well. So we had, you know, at one point we had a fourth student intern also joining us and who was a little bit younger than us. So like I was a first graduate student, but the fourth student intern who joined was a I think first year IT student, IT and mathematics students are also very different than of course like social science and also different in business. And so as part of the student staff partnership at Minuth University, we were collaborating closely through the year with, especially the project leads and who was Morag was also from Minuth University and she was situated in, you know, kind of agile education. And so we kind of she was our first point of contact. So we had like weekly meetings with her. Of course, also when we had, you know, when there were off days or bank holidays or, you know, off times during the academic year, and we didn't have meetings. So it was really, really nice as a student to also kind of have some safety, some, you know, around working hours. And, you know, from the academic timetable that, you know, both students and stuff kind of adhere to us also as part of the project. And yeah, so we had weekly meetings. We had a Microsoft Teams page as well. And what I didn't say in the beginning is that the year that I was a student intern was during the, you know, COVID pandemic or the kind of like first year of the, and, you know, kind of working remotely. So we used a lot of digital tools, which I guess like made sense also in context of our project enhancing digital teaching and learning project. So we ourselves kind of used a lot of digital tools to collaborate such as, and we had like a WhatsApp group. We had like a Microsoft Teams group as I was mentioning the meetings also because we couldn't meet in person were online as well. So we actually only met in person the first time. I think after that year always like towards the end of the project that was the first time kind of where we had an event together in person at the university. And so yeah, most of the meetings were remotely also from Microsoft Teams. And we used a lot and the Microsoft Teams group because like that was kind of our platform or our shared space, where we kind of shared a lot of the work that we've been doing. And, you know, quick questions that we had. I was involved very much also in the Instagram team as part of, you know, Menuth University, where we did some campaigns together with the new students union, but also as part of the wider EDTL team. So we were kind of also a few other students from other universities, other student interns. We met also in addition to the weekly meetings with our, you know, local kind of project leads. We set up another Microsoft Teams group and another kind of reoccurring series of meetings with the Instagram team where we met with, you know, students who ever wanted to join as part of the EDTL team. And where we met and developed kind of content for the, you know, what we're going to post the next week on the EDTL channel, which didn't only concern, you know, Menuth University, but also to attention to, you know, a series kind of campaigns or support universities, such as, you know, like in court, for example, or, you know, other Irish universities who are our partners. Yeah, so that was kind of them, they were kind of the main things that I was involved in, in kind of working together with other student interns at Menuth. And as part of the Instagram team in Menuth and beyond Menuth, but also then there was the option, which I think was really great to have the option, but also not be kind of forced to join. Which were these kind of wider EDTL meetings from, you know, other project leads from the other university partners that were part of the EDTL project. And they were usually steered and kind of facilitated and hosted by Sharon, and, you know, was kind of like the main director of the project, or the main person responsible for the project. You know, I joined them a couple of times. And, you know, what we did there was updates, you know, other members from other universities, and what's what's going on in Menuth, what we've been doing, you know, as part of the Instagram team. So that was always nice to kind of also have a space there to kind of share our voice and come with questions and so on to like the wider team. And we were always reminded when we were sent out the meeting invitations for these wider meetings that, you know, we didn't we weren't expected to be part of this wider. So like each student intern was invited and very much welcomed this meeting said it was great for me to kind of learn about what's going on in these other universities as well right because it was really interesting then to kind of bring that back to our university or to the team and kind of like, and use that to create more contact content to steer our conversations. And so it was really a good opportunity to take part but also nice not to be forced to do that. Yeah, do you have any other questions? Maybe I'm out of town. Maybe just just a brief like 30 seconds like what out of your experience in the project like what will you recommend as the best way of involving students as partners, you know, trying to work with the with stuff like what will be a recommendation just just 30 seconds. Yeah, the importance of dialogue, for example, is something that's, you know, for me at the core, you know, making sure that students, whenever you have this weekly checking meetings or however you want to structure it, do have a space to also come with questions and and also feel safe to kind of express their ideas, you know, students might be a little bit, you know, still caught in the dynamic of looking up to, you know, staff partners. And so it's very, very helpful to be kind of encouraged to come, even with, you know, ideas that aren't fully developed and seek more and seek advice from staff as well, but also, you know, kind of be encouraged not to not to be, yeah, like perfect yet, but also not to not seek advice to be actively asked and reached out to as well. And to kind of come with, you know, what's there yet or what they feel like they would like to do. And it's dialogue is something that's at the core, I think, in partnership. Okay, thank you very much, Kathy, and we show the best over there in my notes. You too. Thank you. So thank you. Thank you, Kathy, and Schneid for that wonderful sharing of your experience. So we'll get back to our presentation and, as I said, we interviewed both staff and students and to understand this kind of experiences that they had partnering within the partnership of student and staff. And I'm just going to conclude my presentation by sharing the staff experiences. What did the staff think about the the student staff partnership and the internship model. So, generally, we found out that, you know, staff appreciated the value that this this internship brought to the project and there was greater emphasis on the authenticity that it brought this authenticity of the student voice and the student representation that the model brought into the into the into the project. And also they just say, you know, they thought that involving the students as partners in the project. It brought the authentic student voice in each and every project activity that we are doing, because you see even in the webinars and students who are being involved in presentation in workshop students are being involved. And right now, even in research, as a student, I am the one who is making this presentation and we are making this presentation, the three of us, myself, Schneid and Schneid myself and then and and Kathy. And that shows how a, you know, key it is like when you bring students you can hear directly from their voices rather than hearing from a third party. Then just also involving student and working directly with students brought some sort of a different perspective that will have never been captured by staff was most of the staff admitted that they were actually students like long time ago and the current students were experiencing different issues, compared to a student maybe was enrolled like maybe three years ago before the pandemic and, you know, so and just having a student brought some sort of convenience like you know you have somebody to help you, and you're partnering with directly without going through the complicated structure of the student union, which is like the most common available option for student staff a partnership. As you can see from the Boba team course, so these are three different stuff just talking sharing about the experiences that there's one stuff was who said like you know I delivered a workshop in collaboration with one of our interns, and I've done that workshop many times over the years but when I delivered it in conjunction with the student. It was completely different for the better because she was able to bring much more of an once perspective to the workshop. So just the different perspective that students bring to the project and involving student has really brought the authentic student voice to the project activities and has helped us to shape the project. So that is a member of staff, you know, saying, and the last quote there, the staff aren't getting inside inside a real inside into how students are experiencing things, and to be completely honest, sometimes when the students came together and discuss those experiences they allowed us to get that insight to hear them speaking to talk about the impact that was that was having on them. You know, it brought a different perspective, so sorry for the type of so just for us as students sharing with stuff, what we're experiencing, especially during the pandemic, some of us like me. I'm a student of, you know, of the pandemic because I started my PhD during the pandemic so the challenges that I was facing, you know, the kind of needs that we had as students at that time were just totally different from what maybe the students and of, you know, pre pandemic were having so it was important that, that, that, that you hear from, you know, students. So then the overall from this presentation from the experiences of the, you know, the students and the interns we asked like what would be the recommendation of, you know, students staff, a partnership what, you know, what could the students recommend and this is what came up so. So number one we found that there wasn't this a need for a structured model for involving student as partners in teaching and learning, and other than the student union, you see, just to explain the how and the what like the model at this, you know, the, this is the structure that this kind of internship like our internship part like you know, because the student union is a very complicated body where, you know, all these stuff are trying to collaborate with students to the student union but in this case we had a member of staff working with a student dedicated to them. Then it is very important also to compensate us students when you're involving us, you know, to cater for the time that we spend collaborating with staff because you know like some of us, we are not only students but we are also engaging in some part time job so when we come to engage you know to actively engage those 15 hours per week those 20 hours per week. We are giving our time that otherwise we could be doing other things out there, or even just you know, so it's important to compensate and recognize students effort by paying them that's what we did in the project paying the students the 13.91 Europe a hour. Then training for both students and staff is important to highlight possible areas of student staff because some of us did not know about areas of student staff partnership within our university until we joined this project. So there are lots of other opportunities for student staff collaboration that students are not aware of or staff are not aware of so there's need for, you know, sensitization and training and education. And also, there's always that fear of reprimanding, you know, like we feel like you know when you give your opinion, maybe you might be punished somehow you might be penalized. So it's important to sensitize students on ways and avenues of giving feedback without fearing the fear of being reprimanded. And just looking at my own experience and the experiences of the other like four international three international students you know the gender diversity that was there the kind of a level of education diversity that was there. So it's actually very important to have a diverse and inclusive be as diverse and as inclusive as possible, just trying to involve different types of students because different students come with different needs. Like an international students just moving to Ireland or moving to the UK or somewhere in France to start college. You know they come with different needs when it comes to you know what they what they need so we're in teaching and learning, you need to factor in the voices of such kind of students, you know, undergraduate students might have different needs from postgraduate students myself as a PhD PhD is a very lonely journey like you might not have networks as compared to undergraduate students. Then also and lastly but not least last but not least is a always involve those students who are currently enrolled because there are some internship models where students are hired post their graduation or their study period. Then that sometimes you do not capture that real time experience because you see a case study of the pandemic as student was a student in 2019. First, totally different challenges or had a total different experience from a student who started in 2020 during the pandemic like myself and many others and you know, just to conclude that kudos to all the students who started during the pandemic and they are still starting today so thank you very much for taking your time to listen in case you have any questions or any comments you can just DM me on Twitter at fkongoli and send an email to me, Fernando.ongoli.iua.ie. Thank you.