Degrees of co-creation: an exploratory study of perceptions of international students’ role in community engagement experiences

Abstract

Increased competition for the international student market has motivated universities to modernize their marketing strategies. Community engagement is an important component of students' international university experience and represents a potential point of competitive advantage. Developing marketing strategies around university-studentcommunity engagement (U-S -CE) requires an understanding of the perspectives of international students, the university and the community. We anchored our study in value co-creation which is a principle of the service dominant logic framework found in the marketing literature. With limited research in the area, a qualitative approach was appropriate. Interviews were undertaken with key university members (n ¼ 4) and community members (n ¼ 5) concurrently with focus groups of international students (n ¼ 22) at a single university. Based on the degree of co-creation by international students in U-S -CE, three groups emerged: consumers, collaborators and co-designers. This study offers theoretical and practical insight, providing a platform for further research into U-S -CE.

Improving Society by Improving Education through Service-Dominant Logic: Reframing the Role of Students in Higher Education

“…More recently, there has been a growing interest in analyzing HE services from the SDL perspective. Thus, some researchers have used this approach to analyze different HE service aspects, such as the importance of pedagogy over technology in HE provision [45], the change in the focus of the marketization debate to a co-creation approach [2], the assessment of lecturer's performance only by the use of student satisfaction surveys [31], the identification of types of value expected by students from universities [32], and the degrees of co-creation experiences lived by international students in university-student-community engagement [46].…”

Co-Creation in Higher Education

“…Fleischman, Raciti and Lawley (2015) also used a co-creation perspective in a study of higher education international students' engagement with their university and their community. Their findings put forth that there are degrees of co-creation among students, with some emerging as consumers, collaborators or co-designers.…”

“…Their findings put forth that there are degrees of co-creation among students, with some emerging as consumers, collaborators or co-designers. They also find that students' motivations and culture, as well as a clear purpose or link to why they should participate in co-creation are important mediators of the process (Fleischman, Raciti & Lawley, 2015). Emerging research using the concept of co-creation has also explored cocreation of rubrics (Fraile, Panadero & Pardo, 2017) and co-creating learning analytics in higher education .…”

“…Flesichman, Raciti & Lawley, 2015;Gros & López, 2016) allude to the potential co-creation might have in the field. Moreover, Pinar, Trapp, Girad, Boyt (2011) write that many of the challenges facing higher education stem from a misunderstanding between students and other stakeholders and an inability to understand one another's perspectives, that could be positively impacted through facilitating co-creation processes.…”

“…Resource integration occurs when consumers are either allowed and/or also incentivised to share their resources with organisations (Frow, McColl-Kennedy & Payne, 2016) and it is important for the cocreation process to be able to continually add value (Prahalad & Ramaswamy, 2003). Third, the definition uses the term 'collaborators' referring to co-creation as not only a closed relationship between fixed organisational members and select consumers, but instead an open process that elicits resource integration from a range of stakeholders (Fleischman, Raciti & Lawley, 2015;McColl-Kennedy et al, 2012).…”