Success in student-faculty/staff SoTL partnerships: Motivations, challenges, power, and definitions

Partnerships with students are considered one of the principles of good Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) practice. However, not all partnerships are equally successful. What characteristics are common to successful partnerships and what preparatory elements can lead toward more successful partnerships? In this article, our team of graduate students, educational developers, and faculty members engage in detailed self-reflection on our past and ongoing SoTL projects as an inquiry into what it means to be in a successful student-faculty/staff partnership. Using thematic analysis, we identify and describe four distinct domains that can shape partnerships: (1) motivations to participate, (2) challenges, (3) power, and (4) definitions of success. The article concludes with a set of questions to stimulate initial and ongoing conversations between partners to guide new partnerships in defining the parameters for success in their proposed collaboration.