Abstract:

Co-creation refers to a framework in which businesses include potential customers and significant stakeholders in their ideation and development processes. In Higher Education (HE), co-creation can be used to help students solve real-life problems collaboratively and creatively with the help of actual companies and dedicated facilitators. This approach to complex problem solving promotes not only an effective engagement of the students with problem-based learning but also enhances their active and participatory attitudes and motivation. The current study refers to a part of a project related to co-creation facilitation in the Portuguese Polytechnic landscape. More specifically, it focuses on a real-life case study designed collaboratively with a Portuguese industrial company. In this process, a team of multidisciplinary and multicultural HE students of the Portuguese Leiria Polytechnic was created to tackle a challenge related to the company’s flagship product, namely its automated and movable walls. The current case study reports on the main findings and outcomes of the co-creation process, as well as on the insights of this methodology used as a student-centred learning process by bridging industry and academia on solving real-life challenges and problems.

Keywords:

Co-creation, Problem-based learning, Student-centred learning, Innovation, Creativity.