Background
In November 2009, Birmingham City University and Birmingham City Students’ Union launched the Student Academic Partners (SAP) scheme.
The SAP scheme aims to integrate students into the teaching and pedagogic research communities of faculties as a way to develop collaboration between students and staff, generating a sense of ownership and pride in the institution and its programmes. The scheme provides students and staff with the opportunity to work in collaboration to strengthen learning and teaching at the University.
Birmingham City University sees effective learning partnerships between students and staff as the cornerstone of its activity. Through a strong partnership between the University’s Centre for Excellence in Teaching and Learning (CETL) and the Students’ Union the ‘Learning Community’ initiative was launched across the university to engage students in a wide variety of joint academic activities with faculty. The partnership believes that this will offer students and staff benefits from a wider academic engagement that were not contemplated when their studies began.
The SAP Scheme offers an opportunity for paid employment to enable students to work in equal partnership with faculty staff to strengthen the learning and teaching development of the University. The Scheme invites students and staff to identify educational development projects in which a student will play an active role. This provides students with the opportunity to guide the development of projects in an academic employment setting in a paid post at the University.
We are extremely proud of this scheme and the potential it offers to staff and students alike. To date the scheme has gained significant interest from the National Union of Students (NUS) and the Higher Education Academy (HEA) in their joint project on student engagement as well as the Association of Registrars’ Council (ARC).
In 2010 we also won the Times Higher Education Award for 'Outstanding Student Support' for the scheme.
To find out more about applying to be a SAP project this year click on the tabs to left for more information.
Click here to view our 'Creating
the Learning Community through
Student Academic Partners' brochure.