The highly successful International Students as Partners Institute (ISaPI) will be held for the 5th time at McMaster University, Ontario, Canada (approx. 45 min south of Toronto Airport) from 20-22 May 2020. Please pass this message on to any colleagues you think may be interested in ISaPI.

The overall aim of ISaPI is to build the capacity and understanding of faculty, staff, and students to develop, design, implement, and disseminate initiatives that promote the practice of students as partners in learning and teaching in higher education. The activities will be facilitated by a highly experienced international team of staff/faculty and students. Delegates may participate either in a series of workshops or the Change Institute:

Staff and faculty are encouraged, where possible, to bring a student with them, or students to bring a member of staff/faculty with them to participate in a series of interactive workshops over three days, run by a new team, so previous participants are encouraged to join us again.

Alternatively, teams of 4-6 faculty/staff and students (at least two of each) from an institution can apply to join a three day ‘Change Institute’ at which they’ll develop a ‘students as partners’ initiative that they hope to implement in the coming year.

For further details about the change institute application process please go to: https://tinyurl.com/yzsvg6g2 Information on fees and registration can be found here: https://tinyurl.com/yzclxmok. Follow @McMaster_MI_SaP and #ISaPI20 on twitter for further updates.

Over 350 staff/faculty and students have participated in the last four years in roughly equal numbers.

Comments on the workshops:

• Thanks for this most challenging and rewarding experience, a very inspiring three day!
• The best thing about the Institute was having a chance to work with students and teachers from around the world and seeing the way they do things at their universities was really enlightening.

Overall, I found the institute to be an eye-opening experience. As a student, it allowed me to learn from perspectives of those that I don’t often hear from (professors, educational developers, curriculum developers), and provided me with a growing sense of agency over my own education.

Comments on the Change Institute:

• Allowed our group to be surrounded with creative institutions and engage in conversations
• New ideas that will help us to sustain and mature our project
• We have now combined our enthusiasm with concrete plans, and we are now able to make real progress

Key Dates & Deadlines

2 December 2020: Registration for workshops open on a first come, first served basis.

24 February 2020: Change Institute applications due (Apply Here!)

9 March 2020: Change Institute teams notified of acceptance

3 April 2020: Early Bird Registration deadline

6 May 2020: Regular Registration deadline

20-22 May 2020: Institute held

One of the outcomes of the first ISaPI was the establishment of the International Journal for Students as Partners that publishes research articles, case studies, reflective essays and opinion pieces. It is run, like ISaPI, by an international team of faculty/staff and students from six different countries. The sixth issue was published recently.