Equity-First Students as Partners Microgrants

Program Overview

The Students as Partners microgrant program is a HEPPP funded scheme that facilitates meaningful partnership projects between staff and students at Deakin university.

In 2023, the scheme funded 13 microgrant projects, successfully engaging 51 equity-students and 49 staff members in various levels of partnership. Supported by the Office of the Dean of Students, all academic and professional staff members are invited to apply for a microgrant.

See the 2024 Microgrants

…a collaborative, reciprocal process through which all participants have the opportunity to contribute equally, although not necessarily in the same ways, to curricular or pedagogical conceptualisation, decision making, implementation, investigation or analysis.

Cook-Sather, Bovill & Felten, 2014, pp. 6-7

Overview

Microgrant projects are an opportunity for students and staff to work towards shared goals in project teams. Student partners are casually paid to co-create and co-design alongside staff members in a project that improves inclusion, accessibility, retention, or student success at Deakin University. The microgrants represent the more involved levels of student partnership by repositioning students from ‘consumers’ to co-creators of their education.

In microgrant projects, students are given agency, voice, and are active participants in shaping their learning, teaching, assessment, curriculum and policy at the University. Covering any aspect of the University experience, microgrants embody a collaborative and reciprocal process where everyone has an opportunity to contribute.

Benefits for participants

Staff can use a microgrant project to work towards further research, engage in reciprocal learning, improve teaching practices, co-create relevant resources, build meaningful relationships with students, and better understand the student experience.

Aside from an employment opportunity, students stand to gain a greater sense of connection and belonging to their university, improved job readiness and employability, attainment of soft and hard skills to support academic potential, and increased personal capabilities and motivations. By participating as a student partner, they are directly improving their own and future student experiences.

Examples of partnership

Students and staff co-designing and co-facilitating focus groups (students as influencers).
Student and staff interviewing industry and university stakeholders to canvas the current state-of-play (students as influencers).
Students and staff using design thinking workshops to re-write policy (students as decision-makers).
Students and staff co-conduct professional training for staff (students as co-creators).
Students and staff co-creating learning resources (students as co-creators).

Applying for a microgrant

All microgrant applications must have an equity-first focus to improve teaching and learning experiences. The program also recruits students with an equity-first approach, prioritising HEPPP requirements: domestic and undergraduate students who come from a low socioeconomic background, regional or rural area, and/or Indigenous persons.

The funds of successful recipients are used to pay student partners. All projects must also adhere to equity-first principles. This means that the project should:

Be designed to improve inclusion, accessibility, or student success at Deakin
Recruit students with an equity-first approach, prioritising students who come from an equity cohort including low socioeconomic status, regional or rural, and/or Indigenous persons.

Funding calls are made twice every calendar year. Questions and enquiries can made to the Students as Partners team at [email protected]