Title: Evolving Partnerships: From Service User and Provider to Critical Friends

Author: Fiona Buckland, Beth Christie and Lizzy Garner-Foy

Theme: Partnerships

By sharing the story of a partnership between an academic course team and the central Online Course Production team – which evolved from service user and provider to critical friends – we highlight the benefits of collaborative, diverse team working to both staff and students.

Our partnership is based on delivering the best online learning and teaching experience to staff and students, which has bought rewards to both parties and our learners. Our joint aim is to embed good practice in online course design, explore innovations in open educational resources, and assist each other in navigating new platforms such as Learn Ultra to continuously ensure the best possible student experience in learning and teaching.

We have nurtured and sustained a network of external partnerships that would not have evolved without the strength and success of our internal collaborative work. Investors such as The British Council and Learning for Sustainability Scotland have felt reassured about the University’s ability to create effective online courses due to the strong partnership between academic and learning technology professional teams.

This investment has also encouraged a range of community groups and key individuals to make invaluable contributions to course content. The complexity of taking these projects forward has only been manageable as a result of the confidence that has grown in one another through this partnership, and the trust and value in each other’s skills. We wish to share our key takeaways from our evolving collaborations to encourage staff and students to nurture and develop their own partnerships both within and beyond the University.