Faculty-student pedagogical partnership in the virtual classroom: Lessons from COVID-19

The Faculty-Student Partnership Program (FSPP) at Lingnan University Hong Kong had its small but significant beginnings in 2014. Fitting into the “pedagogic consultancy” quadrant of Healey et al.’s (2016) Students as Partners (SaP) conceptual model, the program does not involve curriculum design, but rather aims to more directly enhance teaching and learning in the classroom. Trained and paid student partners (SPs) each work with a faculty member for a semester at a time, conducting regular classroom observations, writing post-observation reflection reports, and then dialoguing with their faculty partners (FPs) in weekly meetings, considering classroom dynamics, practices, and pedagogical issues from their differing teacher/student perspectives. SPs also meet regularly together with the program leader(s) throughout the semester for ongoing support and training. More details on how the program is run are outlined in Pounder et al. (2016).

The first semester of 2020 in Hong Kong threw out unexpected challenges for our team. Hong Kong was one of the first places hit by COVID-19. By the second week of the semester, local universities were suddenly and unexpectedly thrown into an online learning mode, with no warning or preparation time. Rather than hoping for a resumption of live classes, we decided to adapt the program to the online mode. SPs were initially very skeptical. After all, how could they perform their central role of observation and giving constructive feedback when there were no live classes to observe and when teachers were adopting a variety of technologies and practices? Each SP was advised to meet up with their FP and discuss how they could work together in this situation. Ultimately, all SPs were able to come to unique
agreements with their respective FPs and conduct a fruitful semester’s partnership. Subsequently, it is possible that this was the first pedagogical student consultant program in the world to complete a whole semester in online mode. That being the case, five SPs in our team decided to share their experiences from this semester.