Week 4: Ethical Foundations: Nurturing Integrity in Student-Staff Partnerships

Dated: 8 May 2024

 Week 4 cemented our halfway mark through the DSJP online course. In the previous weeks, it was content intense sessions. Participants were introduced to the world of Students as Partners and Student-Staff partnerships. They explored the context of equality and equity within Student-Staff partnerships. 

In this week there was a focus on the Design thinking process which was largely facilitated by Esai. Designing thinking is an approach to problem solving which focuses on the human-centered design process consisting of five core stages: Empathize, Define, Ideate, Prototype and Test. It is not a linear process, but loops through the phases iteratively.

Esai facilitated the main group design sprint. Later we moved into small groups where the participants participated in a mini design sprint “How we might work together equitably in SSPs”. This was a great way to introduce the design sprint as the basis of the Partner projects would be problem solving in the form of a design sprint. 

Overall, the participants found the design sprint to be useful as it helped them envision the implementation of their eventual projects. 

By: Joe-Dean Roberts