Students as ambassadors and researchers of assessment renewal: puzzling over the practices of university and academic life

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Engaging students as partners in learning, teaching, and curriculum renewal is driven by different agendas, and takes multiple forms. Although the research is clear on the ethical necessity of student participation in these efforts, the institutional challenges remain ongoing and writ large. This article offers an account of an innovative students-as-partners initiative at the University of Sydney, in which six undergraduates were engaged as student ambassadors to participate in and research the institution’s learning and teaching conference – the Sydney Teaching Colloquium. While students have regularly been sought out as contributors to, and representatives of, the student voice, the initiative marked a significant departure from the university’s tendency to rely on student feedback surveys and committee representation as its main institutionalised forms of student voice. Over four months, these student ambassadors worked with the central academic development unit to plan, execute, research, and evaluate a programme of activity designed to enhance authentic student participation in curriculum renewal. This article – conceived and co-written with these students – is in part, their reflective account of what they learned about universities: how they are organised and enact assessment curriculum change designed to improve student learning. Their reflections remind us that in order for them to feel genuinely engaged as partners, more needs to be done to help students learn about how and why academics and universities operate as they do.