Growing references to students as customers have had a distinct impact on the overall environment in Higher Education (HE). Lengnick-Hall et al include education providers into the group of organizations that they refer to as ‘human service firms’ where the ‘primary deliverable’ is ‘human change’ and the customer themselves are the ‘primary raw material’ that the firm ‘seeks to change’ (p.360, 2000) or add value to. Beaty et al identify specific ‘orientations to learning ‘that distinguish students and their respective strategies to ‘gain maximum value from the experience’ (p.72, 1997). These characteristics pose distinct complexities to universities, policy makers, regulators and most importantly students and parents alike, who seek to measure service quality to inform their respective decision-making needs. Despite these complexities policy makers, regulators, and scholars continue to identify and develop proxies such as attainment & employment data via surveys and league tables to measure service quality such as the Teaching Excellence Framework.

This session will explore, a key conference theme, namely ‘institution-wide future focused innovations’. Particularly how learners are engaged in co-design and delivery beyond the already established roles of ‘students as partners’ on committees, student unions or surveys. As an oral presentation the session will set out data from on-going research seeking to identify the mechanisms that universities use to co-create value for their learners, inside and outside the classroom. In focussing on value of the student experience inside and outside the classroom, the session also highlights the effect that non-academic support functions within universities such as estates, student services and marketing communications have on the design, development, and delivery of value.

Understanding the role value co-creation mechanisms play in framing the ‘value for money’ perceptions that learners construct will hopefully help practitioners adapt their respective departmental strategies to either alleviate or completely close gaps within their functional units. More importantly the session will seek to offer participants ideas and insights of how these various services within a university can work together to design, develop, and deliver a seamless experience which proactively anticipates the stated and unstated needs of learners.

Keywords: Co-Creation, Interaction, Student engagement, Active Learning, Experiential Learning.