Understand the ways in which an effective partnership with your Students' union can enhance the development of your student-focused activities. Evaluate a range of approaches to partnership working with your students' union. Assess your current working relationship with your student's' union and plan ways this can be effectively developed.

1. Enhancing the Student Experience
through Partnership Working
Maria Lorenzini
Director of Student Experience,
Bangor University

2. Session Outcomes
By the end of today’s session, you will have been provided with the opportunity to:
• understand the ways in which an effective partnership with your Students’ Union can
enhance the development of your student-focused activities;
• evaluate a range of approaches to partnership working with your Students’ Union;
• assess your current working relationship with your Students’ Union and plan ways this
can be effectively developed.

3. • What do we mean by ‘ enhancing the student experience’?
• How do you currently work with students?
• Why have a partnership approach to enhancement?
• How well do you know your Students’ Union?
• Student partnership: making it meaningful, making it work
• Planning your future partnership work
Session Outline

4. Enhancing the Student Experience Through Partnership Working
A commitment to the enhancement of the student experience requires a
university to review all student-related activity from the perspective of its
diverse and changing student body to ensure that the institution is meeting
the needs of all students
Bangor University’s Student Experience Enhancement Strategy 2011-14

5. Enhancing the Student Experience Through Partnership Working
A university that successfully engages its students in a collaborative
approach to the development of the student experience will be best placed
to meets the challenges of the new HE environment.
Bangor University’s Student Experience Enhancement Strategy 2011-14

6. The Student Voice in Service Development
How much of each activity is part of your service’s work?
Feedback (asking students, individually or in groups, what they think of
what you’ve done)
Representation (inviting students to attend your meetings)
Consultation (asking for student input when you develop areas of work)
Collaboration (working with students on joint projects)
Partnership (sharing a vision for the development of your service)
How is each activity useful? What are its limitations?

7. Enhancing the Student Experience Through Partnership Working
Partnership working with students goes beyond student representation or
consultation, but is instead collaborative working based on an agenda of
mutual respect. It is not a challenge to academic authority but a means of
increasing engagement amongst our students through acknowledgement
of the vital contribution students can make to enhancing and shaping their
own university.
Bangor University’s Student Experience Enhancement Strategy 2011-14

8. Enhancing the Student Experience Through Partnership Working
A commitment to partnership working with students will require a
willingness to change our systems and practices in order to facilitate
collaborative working between staff and students. It is an approach that
avoids making assumptions about what is best for students and works
towards a cohesive university community developed by students and staff
through continuous dialogue
Bangor University’s Student Experience Enhancement Strategy 2011-14

9. Some reasons to work with your Students’ Union
Our Students’ Unions are:
• the broadest form of student representation we can access
• independent of our University management structure
• (mostly) trained by NUS with access to student-related expertise and
resources
• part of a broader movement that prioritises diversity and inclusivity
• up-to-date with the student experience

10. Some reasons to work with your Students’ Union
Our Students’ Unions can:
• train and support students in representation
• provide context for the individual student opinion
• champion our work within our institution and externally
• provide continuity in our collaborative work with students
• provide creativity and innovative thinking
• keep us alert to emerging issues amongst students
• be a critical friend in the development of our work

11. How well do you know your Students’ Union?
Take the SU Quiz

12. Partnership Working: Making it Meaningful
Respectful: taking the time to understand your Students’ Union
Trusting: sharing information to help each other see the bigger picture
Evidence-based: establishing a mutual commitment to evidence-based views
Representative: working to facilitate inclusivity in partnership working
Mutually beneficial: ensuring positive outcomes for student partners

13. Partnership Working: Making it Work
• Tune into the annual cycle of SU elections and identify the most relevant
people to work with
• Build relationships with the permanent SU staff
• Find out what matters to the Officers by reading their election manifestos
• Build relationships with Sabbatical Officers, Senators and Chairs of Societies
• Share information to provide context for the issues they are interested in

14. Partnership Working: Making it Work
• Involve your Students’ Union in planning how to incorporate the student
perspective in your service evaluation
• Set up collaborative projects related to their manifesto commitments
• Agree a shared strategy for the development of your area of work
• Be realistic about how much time the Students’ Union will have to work
with you
• Be supportive of their work and be sure to acknowledge their
contribution to yours

15. Use the framework to identify how developing partnership working with your
students can contribution to the enhancement of your service
Your partnership work with students

16. Some further reading on student engagement and partnership working with
students:
• http://www.nusconnect.org.uk/campaigns/highereducation/student-
engagement/toolkit/
• http://www.nusconnect.org.uk/campaigns/highereducation/partnership/a-manifesto-
for-partnerships/
• http://tsep.org.uk/about/
• http://www.nus.org.uk/en/nus-wales/campaigns/wise/
• https://www.heacademy.ac.uk/workstreams-research/themes/students-partners
• http://www.qaa.ac.uk/en/Publications/Pages/Quality-Code-Chapter-
B5.aspx#.VUDkde7F9yg
Further information