CPUT, UCT and UWC invite you to join their 6-topic free online course “Designing for Social Justice Partnerships: Co-Creation across Difference”. The course is designed to support student-staff partnerships in higher education. Intended applicants need to register in pairs, a student with an academic or professional support staff working together on any current partnership project.

This free 12-week online short course, developed with DHET funding, aims to promote design approaches that welcome learner participation throughout the teaching and learning process, starting with involving learners and other stakeholders in co-design, facilitation, and research on teaching, learning, and assessment. It will explore the potential of including learner voice in the design, creation, and quality assurance of courses, course content, informal and extracurricular activities, and research activities, as a powerful remedy for injustice, allowing previously marginalised and silenced voices to be heard.

The course will discuss the opportunities and challenges of co-design approaches, such as increased responsiveness to student needs, as well as tensions between more participatory and co-creative approaches and institutional requirements and limited access to resources. Unpacking equity-oriented learning design approaches will help participants navigate power differentials in these contexts.

Course Date: 30 March - 21 June 2026
Location: Online
Time of synchronous meetings: Monday, 16:00 - 18:00 (biweekly: 30/03, 13/04, 28/04, 11/05, 25/05, 8/06, 22/06)
Duration: 12 weeks
Deadline for registration: 16 March 2026

To register, please click visit our Learningstore and follow these steps:

• Click on enroll
• Login if you are a UCT student/staff member
• Click on Register if you are NOT a UCT student/staff member
• Your Login details will also be sent via email
• When you have completed this, Remember to Login as a GUEST if you are not a UCT student/staff member

For more information, email This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it. or This email address is being protected from spambots. You need JavaScript enabled to view it.

By the end of this short course participants should be able to:

1. Advocate for the potential for co-creation in learning design
2. Select a model of Student-Staff Partnerships (SSPs) appropriate for their context
3. Select a theoretical approach to SSPs framed by a concern for social justice appropriate to their context
4. Co-create/Co-design a SSP intervention for their context
5. Apply ethical practices in relation to SSPs and/or address ethical issues/dilemmas/tensions when designing for SSPs in their contexts
6. Apply skills to design, implement/facilitate and evaluate co-creation projects and processes in contexts of inequality
7. Recognise interpersonal dynamics, including those of privilege, power and intersectional identity, and integrate this recognition into interactions with others.