Student and staff narratives of the outcomes and experiences of institutional and cross-institutional student-staff research partnerships

We will first present an overview of the student-staff partnership schemes that are run at both Kingston University London (KUL) and London Metropolitan University (LMU). In doing so, we will demonstrate how these schemes have been utilised in the past few years to enhance the academic experience of under-represented groups of students in tackling strategic priorities such as retention and progression, attainment and employability. Sophie, Jillian and Selina will then briefly present the findings of two research projects they have been directly involved in, one reviewing staff and student perspectives on high quality teaching and the other in developing strategies to enhance student engagement. They will highlight the benefits and the challenges they faced being at the forefront of driving positive change in the student experience. In our narrative, we also go beyond the concept of simply embedding partnerships at the institutional level and give an example of how we have established a cross-institutional student-staff partnership. This is particularly pertinent in understanding challenges such as those encountered by the post-92 universities (e.g. KUL and LMU) especially in London, where there is a significantly greater diversity of students from many different backgrounds, which can lead to challenges in providing equitable student experiences. Cross- institutional therefore can be used not only as a means to identify many of our unique features, but also those challenges that we have in common, so we can identify, learn and share best practice together in developing and enhancing our student engagement strategies.