Taking off the academic ‘armour’: Exploring notions of co-creation within a selective UK university via a student-staff partnership.
Abstract
This case study sought to explore notions of co-creation and co-creation practices, from both student and staff perspectives, at a single research-intensive university in central England. The article explores and provides insight into how co-creation is understood and practiced at an institutional level. Students and staff at the University of Warwick co-led the research through a philosophy of partnership. The authors adopted a qualitative approach to the data, conducting twenty semi-structured interviews over several months. Interviewees included students and academic/professional services staff. While noting the benefits of co-creation identified by our research participants, the paper suggests that the co-creation concept needs to be better understood through critical reflection and engagement to cultivate richer co-creative practices. The paper argues that a critical aspect of this engagement is openly acknowledging power implications in co-creative spaces within a Higher Education (HE) context.
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