Many higher education institutions are adopting learning and teaching approaches that embrace "students as partners". This can be met with trepidation by academic staff and students. The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate, through two UK-based institutional case studies, that a partnership approach provides an opportunity for staff and students--where each appreciate the others' perspective and the barriers to learning are reduced. We propose five learning points upon which academic developers might reflect and act in order to get to the very heart of how we might achieve and sustain partnership work.