Thao Vu¹
Hasini Rathnasara¹, Nesha Chek¹, Thomas Nguyen¹, Xiaolin Du1¹, Long Tran¹, Michael Ja¹, Harjit Khera¹ and Daniel Malone¹
1 Monash University

Via co-creation, educators and students collaborate to design and improve learning and assessment experience by incorporating students’ inputs. Although co-creation is an important and well researched phenomenon in Higher Education, not much is known about student-staff co-creation in Health Profession Education (HPE), especially in co-creating assessments. 

This qualitative auto-ethnography study, situated within an interpretivist paradigm, was conducted to explore how a group of six students experienced co-creating clinical cases for formative assessments with their educators, and how they perceived the effects of co-creation on themselves. Data included 60 reflection entries collected during the process. Data was analysed using thematic analysis. 

The study found that these students' very first experience of co-creation involved various emotions ranging from confusion, anxiety, frustration and defeat at the beginning, to increased confidence, motivation, optimism and self-assurance towards the end of the process. They utilised various tools, most importantly the simulation platform where the cases were created, feedback, a self-created case matrix, online collaboration and conferencing tools. Enablers included shared goals, peer and educator feedback, fair workload distribution, regular check- in and communication of expectations, whilst challenges pertained to occasional delays in communication with staff and case guidelines. Through this co-creation experience, students felt that they further developed their skill to communicate and teamwork with one another and educators, feedback literacy, deeper understanding of the subject matter, skill to design assessment cases, reflective practice and confidence to cope with uncertainty of new experience. 

The research supports previous findings outside HPE about the benfits of co-creation for students’ engagement and learning. It also offers new and rich insights into how students experienced co-creation and how its positive impacts were made possible in a specific context. 

We suggest designing co-creation learning experience embedded with self-awareness, shared goals, mentorship, feedback literacy, effective communication, among other enablers found in this study. 

References (maximum three) 

Deeley, S. J., & Bovill, C. (2015). Staff student partnership in assessment: Enhancing assessment literacy through democratic practices. Assessment & Evaluation in Higher Education, 42(3), 463–477. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1080/02602938.2015.1126551 

Könings, K. D., Mordang, S., Smeenk, F., Stassen, L., & Ramani, S. (2020). Learner involvement in the co-creation of teaching and learning: Amee guide no. 138. Medical Teacher, 43(8), 924–936. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1080/0142159x.2020.1838464 

Zarandi, N., Soares, A., & Alves, H. (2022). Strategies, benefits and barriers– A systematic literature review of student co-creation in higher education. Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, 1–25. Retrieved from: https://doi.org/10.1080/08841241.2022.2134956