Collaboration, Agency & Student Partnership: 10 Years of The University of Manchester Library Student Team
In May 2024, the University of Manchester Library Student Team (UMLST) hosted a celebration symposium bringing together our own students and colleagues from across the sector for a day of discussion, exploration and connection. The event marked ten years since the launch of UMLST’s formation and celebrated their award-winning achievements and growth.
We captured some of the thinking of the day below, as well as sharing the presentation slides and a snapshot of images from the day. We are grateful for all the participants taking the time to come and work with us and we hope they left as enthused, driven and optimistic for the future of student partnership as we are!
Success in higher education is often awarded to the individual: the student with the highest mark, the academic with the biggest discovery. Partnership sometimes seems like something that has to be created in spite of the process, structure and culture of the sector. At the University of Manchester Library, we have deliberately built our student support, teaching resource and inclusive practices around the idea, and ideal, of partnership: specifically partnership with students. Our Library Student Team is at the centre of every service, activity and initiative that we deliver for students — they are full collaborative partners and leaders, celebrated for their lived experiences, their energy and their commitment to student success. We are marking ten years since the Library Student Team was officially founded — with six students and a vague idea of them “helping out with the student support” — and to say their impact has been immeasurable is, if anything, underplaying what they have accomplished. They have changed teaching practice, pushed for more accessible and inclusive support services, driven forward new approaches to student/staff collaboration and more. They have spoken at conferences to wide and varied audiences, at student support events to 100s of their peers and on committees and in consultations that have shaped strategic and university-wide practice. And this was only their beginning, because of course they have gone on and continued to shape change, push for equity and shine wherever they end up. We are so privileged to have worked with and unbelievably proud of them, thank you for celebrating this incredible team with us!” — Jennie Blake, Head of Teaching and Learning Development
👉Presentation slides from the day can be found here
There were four themes to structure the day’s discussions:
1. Student partnership and the student voice: How are we approaching partnership as a mechanism to listen to and be in conversation with students? What impact has this work had on your own context and the students who participate?
2. Student partnership and learning: How does student partnership work align with learning, academic success or other elements of university studies? What approaches do we use to ensure learning is a focus in our work?
3. Student partnership and equity: How does student partnership reflect work around equity, inclusion and access? What drivers and impact does partnership have on systemic barriers and elements of belonging and mattering? What changes are you working towards or have you seen?
4. Student partnership wildcard theme: this theme was built out of suggestions on the crowd-sourced Padlet and conversations that emerged on the day.
✍ We asked our participants, what are our goals for student partnership?
✍ … and what resources we need to accomplish these goals?
✍ … and, finally, how will we know we have accomplished our goals?
Participants were asked to think about what 15% solution they could make happen in their role?
· Student workers on interview panels for permanent staff
· Use our end of year showcase to start to build relationships with key stakeholders that could buy into and advocate for the Skills Partner team.
· Involve students in staff recruitment
· Start planning for next academic year students partnership now.
· Involve team members in partnership work
· Look at recruitment, at local procedures, and how can make small changes
· Review first year partnerships with students
· We have our own team of students, but they generally come from library heavy courses, I plan to work with other uni teams who recruit students.
· Reshaping intern roles to help provide leadership/capacity to our student team
· Increase student involvement in engagement events — open days, welcome week etc
· Bring student voices and input in more when creating courses at an earlier stage to help planning
· Develop more interactive ux style activities with students. Not just asking students to participate but actively engage with creation of ux initiatives
· Harness the knowledge of the existing student helpers to start to build a student library team
· Appoint mentors to help manage student team
· Encourage and allow our student interns to co-create their internships
Manchester Library Student Team Reflections
‘The symposium provided insight into the circumstances of other academic institutions and how they have engaged with students and would like to going forward. Attendees showed interest and willingness to learn more about student partnerships and our personal experiences and attitudes towards working in the student team. It was a great opportunity to share what we have achieved as a team and explain more about our roles and the recruitment process. It felt like the other institutions were able to see the benefit of adopting similar schemes and took a lot from the day. I particularly enjoyed the panel, and hearing from staff and longer-standing members of the student team and what they have gained from the role’
— Ashleigh Glazzard
‘The Student Team Symposium was a day to celebrate the power of student partnership within higher education institutions, and it did so fantastically. The Student Team and wider TLS staff were able to reflect on the impact that student partnership can have, and share our successes with a really interesting group of attendees. I personally loved being able to hear about the Student Team format in other universities, learning how those in their infancy planned to expand and grow their teams. I think the panel discussion was especially valuable for attendees, as it provided a varied representation of the individuals involved with partnership projects, and how these can be supported by students and wider staff groups. It was a hugely successful event, and it was great to see the collaboration and very interesting conversations between ST members and the attendees. Credit has to be given to the whole team, as thorough organisation and planning enabled the event to run smoothly and without problems through the day.’
— Annabelle Miller-Blundell
‘The Student Team Symposium was well organized with a schedule packed with roundtable discussions, a panel talk, Q&A, and networking with professionals from various universities within the UK. It was brilliant listening to the idea behind coming up with the Student Team a decade ago and seeing the amazing growth over the years. While the entire event was enriching, my highlight of the day would be the roundtable discussions where we could reflect on all the achievements gained by being part of the Student Team and engaging in discussions on the impact a ST partnership can have around equity and sustainability! Being asked various questions by professionals, from the recruitment process to the way of working, it was good to see the curiosity to know more about the Student Team! Overall, it was a successful day celebrating 10 years of the Library Student Team!’
— Preenal Asher
‘The Student Team symposium was such a fun and emotional day! It was great to be able to share what we do with people from other institutions and hear how interested they were in setting up similar student roles and co-creation opportunities. For me personally, the day gave me an opportunity to reflect on how much the Student Team has helped me in my two years being here, and it was quite emotional to realise just how much my confidence has grown. For a start, when I first started in the student team I couldn’t stand and speak in front of two people, never mind a whole room! It was especially nice that the people who have helped me so much and gave me the belief that I can do things that are out of my comfort zone were also in the room to be part of it. The day ran so smoothly and it was great to meet so many people that were interested in the student team. It was also a lovely way to celebrate all the people that have made the student team what it is and all of the things that have been achieved in the last 10 years!’
— Lily Pearson
Plenary Question & Answer
We invited question from the room to our plenary discussion panel and we have captured our Student Team’s response to these here for posterity beyond the discussion on the day.
- How do you work across the institution to embed student voice making sure it doesn’t feel like toes are being stepped on?
a. More likely we’re invited to work on collaborative projects and our network continues to grow. As our reputation for excellence strengthens, we find that each piece of work can open doors to others. Having Library Team members with strategic positions can get us into the right rooms and seats at tables but those invitations often rely on having the strength of reputation. We’ve recently been invited to work collaboratively on a Peer Assisted Learning and Inclusive Teaching Practice project with colleagues in the Faculty of Science and Engineering (FSE). Most often our Student Team contributions are welcome but, where we feel the need to challenge and push back, we are able to frame this around student needs in a genuine way that brings the lived experiences of students into the room.
- Within your student team role, do you work mostly on focused areas of work with specific library teams, or do you frequently work across the whole library with different teams?
a. We’re based primarily in the Teaching, Learning and Student team working on all things teaching — designing, creating and delivering sessions around academic support and information literacy. Increasingly, we’re branching out far and wide across the Library (and beyond!) to collaborate on everything from projects around inclusive metadata, social media takeovers, environmental sustainability and widening access. Having 6 “Areas” in the teams in our ST help plug the team into a variety of projects and acts as facilitators to the rest of the team. We have a task request form (a simple MS Forms) that anyone can complete to request we work on a project. The team pick these up and filters them to a MS Planner ‘task board’ that acts as a single point of truth for our work and helps keep us organised.
- What is the biggest barrier to student partnership in universities?
a. Money. Firstly, from the university staff perspective, it may be reluctance from the university in funding new student partnership structures or that the funding is limited to only allow a few students. Secondly and more relevant, due to the cost-of-living crisis, 69% of students are now working part-time on top of their studies, and “62% of those working say they [work] to afford to eat and pay bills” (NUS, ‘New data reveal the hidden student job crisis’). Given that the demographics we want better representation from are more likely to be impacted by the cost-of-living crisis, then providing paid opportunities for student partnerships, and even student representation, is absolutely a necessity in making these opportunities inclusive.
- When you need to reach out to the wider student body, what communication methods do you use, and which get the best results?
a. The best way to reach out to the wider student body is to first breakdown the communication itself explicitly and clearly. You need to know: Who the audience is (if it’s the whole student body, it may be better to consider breaking this down and develop communications targeting different sub-audiences); what is the topic of the communication; when there are any significant deadlines or events relating to the communication; where can students engage either digitally and/or in-person; and why should students be interested. Oftentimes communications can miss out important details such as timing, how to buy tickets, or how a specific survey would impact the student. So clearly structuring how you approach communication allows the advertising to be more accessible and allows you to identify which details are most important. Once the communication has been broken down, you want to create various graphics or videos with the goal of capturing the attention or increase engagement. Sometimes it could be as simple as referring to identified student complaints and including a short relatable sentence that hooks them in as the main object in the graphic. You must request feedback from a small group within your audience then check these for accessibility (e.g., using WebAIM’s Contrast Checker) and your University’s good graphic design practices.
Next, you want to design the surrounding text (description or email text) and alt-text simultaneously. Best practice would be to have or repeat important details in the surrounding text and limit the amount of alt-text of the images to be short and concise, this process may be made easier by referring to any of the online Alt Text Decision Trees. Again, you want to request feedback on this from a small group within your audience and check for accessibility, but also you want to make sure you know how to add the alt-text directly to the image metadata (for example, for Facebook and Instagram, alt-text description fields are hidden behind the advanced options for each image).
Lastly, talk to a small group within your audience to identify effective communication methods as well as timing. It may be that your audience are more likely to be checking social media in the evening and so having a Society or multiple Societies, as well as University Social Media Accounts, post your communications in the evening would be an effective method. Most importantly, do not depend on a single method of communication, the most accessible and inclusive method of communication is by using the various current systems already available to communicate through (for example, using department or society newsletters instead of sending separate emails which may contribute to email overwhelm), using opt-in methods of communication like allowing students to subscribe to specific communications, or using physical communication mediums like posters.
- How does the student library team interact with the Students Union?
a. The Student’s Union are a key partner for us and we have good working relationships with lots of colleagues there (they are next door!) across the Executive Officer Team. We (hope!) the relationship is reciprocal in that we can offer to the SU as much as we take by connecting both teams into our networks of people that really make the University happen. We are both driven by improving the experiences of students so there’s a common ground that helps align the two teams. As a practical example, we helped facilitate a series of focus groups around academic advising — you see the report here!
- What is the recruitment process like for hiring student team members and how do you ensure a diverse range of students?
a. Our approach to recruitment is collaborative and inclusive by design. Placing the University of Manchester Library Student Team at the centre of the recruitment process allows each member to use their expertise to shape our approach and implement change in each recruitment cycle.
This agency has resulted in a move away from traditional approaches to a format that is inclusive and collaborative.
The UMLST have addressed barriers within the application process to make the approach more inclusive: drafting the job advert, creating student comms, promoting during welcome weeks, advising us on representation gaps, and redesigning the group interview format.
