The team consists of Mark Huxham (team leader), Rachel Murray (deputy leader), Mo Andrew, Jenny Scoles, Errol Rivera, Kimberly Wilder, Julia Jung, Anne Tierney and Maxine Wood. Team members are drawn from across Edinburgh Napier University (and include members now outside the institution). They are senior and junior academics, support staff, student association staff and undergraduate and postgraduate students. The team reflects the diversity of people who have supported and benefited from the Students as Colleagues initiative.
Inspired by the idea of radical collegiality, it has revolutionised how staff and students see peer evaluation and support of teaching within Edinburgh Napier University and is influencing practice well beyond the institution. All participants are volunteers and all adhere to shared values of: Voluntary participation, Confidentiality, Honesty and Realistic expectations.
The programme fosters deep, trusting relationships among students and staff drawn from all academic disciplines and from relevant support services. It provides bespoke training to students on skills practiced in the programme and vital in many professional roles including: collecting evaluative evidence, giving honest but sensitive feedback and working with colleagues.
The team has worked together in evaluating, researching, presenting and promoting Students as Colleagues. The research, published with students as co-researchers and co-authors, has demonstrated how effective the approach can be and has shown for the first time that students can act as very effective peer reviewers of teaching. Testimony from participants (now exceeding 100) shows both staff and student colleagues have had transformative experiences, often far exceeding expectations, that have profoundly changed their practice. These have included increasing confidence, changing relationships with distance learners, using new approaches towards mental health, helping with new careers and building lasting friendships among staff and students.
The reach of this project now extends beyond Edinburgh Napier, with other higher education institutions in the UK and internationally adopting the approach. Team members have found that it is possible to celebrate and respect differences among people and roles and to use these different perspectives to improve the experience of learning and teaching for everyone.