Sharing Responsibility: staff—student cooperation in learning

No matter how participative a course might be in its conduct, it is normal for the aims to be specified by staff for students, the programme to be planned by staff for students and particularly for the assessment to be one way—of students by staff. It is possible for courses to be established on a different basis, and it is especially necessary when one is dealing with professional education.
This paper focuses on an example of a course which is designed jointly by staff and students: the science education component of a post-experience Graduate Diploma in Science Education at the Western Australian Institute of Technology. In keeping with the philosophy of the course this paper has been prepared by the staff member concerned ( D J Boud ) and one of the students (M T Prosser).
A collaboratively designed course cannot be undertaken lightly for not only does it violate some of the norms of teaching in higher education as we know it, but it also places peculiar demands on both staff and students. These are both of an interpersonal, group interaction kind and of a strucutural, organizational type. The aim of this paper is to describe the main features of the course, to examine some of the demands that it makes, and to explore the applicability of its concepts to other areas of higher education.