What co-creation taught us about solving university problems together

Universities are packed full of expertise, but it’s often fragmented. Faculty speak with faculty, students speak with students, and graduates and external partners tend to enter the picture only occasionally.

The challenge here is rarely about bringing people into the same room to interact. It’s more about designing spaces where people can contribute meaningfully, and where participation feels consequential rather than symbolic.

One example at our university has been our Leadership Forum, which serves to bring together a high-level mix of industry leaders, experienced alumni and faculty to debate questions affecting Morocco and wider society. 

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Topics so far have included the green economy, leading during uncertain times and the changing nature of business leadership.

In addition to these valuable discussion forums, a key benefit has come from pooling different forms of expertise and experience. Industry leaders, experienced alumni and faculty each bring distinct perspectives to questions affecting business, leadership and wider society. These conversations go on to help shape new ways of thinking around institutional and sector challenges.

These moments may sound small, but over time they build trust, and this genuinely matters if universities want people to engage fully and honestly.

We’ve seen something similar during our coffee-and-conversation sessions. These are deliberately informal peer-to-peer gatherings, bringing together faculty and international guest speakers to discuss issues affecting university life, ranging from quality assurance and governance, through to ethics, AI policy and international integration.

Some of the most productive debates during these events have been among some of the more uncomfortable ones. It’s not easy to have conversations around fairness in assessment, the boundaries of AI use and academic misconduct. But creating space for faculty to openly debate these topics, share experiences and challenge assumptions has often improved the quality of the solutions that come afterwards.

One lesson we learned quickly: people can immediately tell if participation is merely performative. If their feedback disappears into a black hole, engagement falls away just as quickly as it arrived.

The reverse is similarly true. When people see even small changes as a result of their input, participation grows.

Making collaboration structured, rather than accidental

Like many institutions, we initially assumed good conversations alone would produce better outcomes. They certainly helped, but weren’t always enough. 

One key challenge was to make sense of competing views. Discussions generated ideas, but priorities were not always clear and it could be difficult to reach a consensus.

This is where we began experimenting with collective inferencing, a structured approach designed to make assumptions, reasoning and priorities more visible within groups.

In simple terms, this helps participants move beyond expressing opinions to understanding why people think differently and where shared ground might exist.

This proved especially useful when discussing complex or sensitive topics, where competing interests can easily dominate. Instead of louder voices carrying the discussion, the process encouraged more balanced participation and clearer follow-through.

The experience also exposed some uncomfortable truths about co-creation. Done poorly, it can become tokenistic and powerful voices can dominate. Worse than this, participation can feel symbolic rather than meaningful, and projects sometimes generate enthusiasm without producing any lasting change.

We’ve learned to take these risks seriously. Clear purpose matters, as does transparency and shared responsibility. Rotating leadership roles, publishing agendas and showing participants how decisions are reached all help build confidence in the process.

Just as importantly, institutions need to ask difficult questions afterwards. What actually changed because of this? Did a policy improve? Did a course evolve? Did relationships strengthen?

Without such reflection, co-creation risks becoming another attractive phrase with limited impact.

What other universities can learn from this

No institution needs to replicate our model exactly and context, of course, always matters. That said, there are a few lessons which have stayed with us and could be useful if applied elsewhere:

1. Start small and solve a real problem. A focused issue often generates more trust than a large institutional initiative. 
2. Design for participation, not attendance. Getting people into the room is not the same as giving them influence. 
3. Make outcomes visible. Even modest changes matter if participants can see their contribution reflected in decisions. 
4. Treat disagreement as useful data. Tension often reveals what matters most to different groups.  

Universities everywhere are under pressure to demonstrate their relevance and rebuild trust in a challenging sector. In this environment, co-creation isn’t a luxury, and it may increasingly become part of how institutions remain responsive and resilient.

We’re still learning. But one thing has become clear: when students, faculty and partners stop working in parallel and start solving problems together, universities become more responsive, trusted and, ultimately, more resilient.

Kawtar Abouhazim is assistant professor of marketing at Al Akhawayn University.

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