Lost in dialogue: An analysis of co-creational interactions between faculty and students

INTRODUCTION: Curriculum co-creation involves partnerships between stakeholders, especially students and faculty, during curriculum development to empower students and improve teaching practice. There is limited understanding of localised and contextualised processes that influence faculty-student co-creational interactions and perception of their roles within the partnership. We aimed to explore faculty and students' perceptions of issues encountered during their co-creational interactions. METHODS: This was a qualitative study. Participants were faculty and medical students involved in working groups as part of an institution-wide curriculum reform. Data included semi-structured interviews with the participants, observations of working group meetings and documentation of student representation in the reform process. Thematic analysis of the data was informed by the analytical framework of co-creational interactions. RESULTS: Participants included nine faculty and fifteen students. We identified four themes: First, dialogic exchange was limited and mostly faculty-driven. Second, student roles were ambiguous and poorly understood by both faculty and students. Third, lack of preparation for co-creation led to faculty and students having different expectations for the extent of student involvement. Fourth, lack of feedback on how student input was incorporated into decision-making led to faculty and students having dissimilar perceptions of the level of partnership. DISCUSSION: Our study revealed that students and faculty had experienced and perceived their co-creational interactions differently, largely due to misaligned expectations regarding students' roles and the overall goals of the reform process. Further, lack of clarity in how student input was used contributed to student dissatisfaction with the co-creation process. Therefore, we propose an expanded model of the framework for co-creational interactions by including pre-dialogue preparation and post-dialogue feedback phases. Taken together, our findings highlight the diversity of faculty and student perspectives and areas of contribution, underscoring the need to customise their roles to participants' expertise and experience.