Resumen de Diseño de un modelo de co-creación de los programas de grado en las universidades ecuatorianas
Universities are currently facing strong competition given the increasing offer of university programs, as well as budget cuts at the education sector as a result of the current economic crisis. Likewise, students are more informed and have developed a greater mobilization capacity; all of which contribute to the internationalization of higher education. This is how it becomes a necessity for universities to be involved in innovative strategic projects in order to develop competitive advantages against the demands of the educational market.
This thesis proposes to apply a co-creative approach in the different university processes, as an innovative marketing alternative to be implemented in the management of undergraduate programs. Co-creation is studied as a proposal to encourage paradigm change where students become key players in the different activities that are developed in institutions of higher education.
This approach promotes a change from the traditional model applied in such institutions, towards "co-creation of value". This movement implies that the organizations are actively involved in a joint process, where students also play an active role through direct interactions. In this sense, students become active actors during the teaching-learning process, through the reinforcement and incentive of their participation in co-creative environments for knowledge generation. Some of the positive implications of this approach are that students develop skills such as communication, leadership, decision making, autonomy and independence.
The first part of this thesis focuses on a systematic review of the main concepts related to value co-creation, as an application in university environment. At this stage the interactions between the different variables that are present during the co-creative processes such as participation, communication and satisfaction were analyzed.
The second phase focused on value co-creation in higher education changing the educational methodologies based on teaching-learning processes. In this way it is proposed a movement from traditional roles of the educational process, where the active and collaborative role of the student is reinforced.
In the final part of the thesis different models are developed with co-creation as central axis, evidencing that communication and participation are solid precursors of co-creation. Likewise, the positive impacts of co-creation on student loyalty, satisfaction and trust were confirmed. The data collection tool applied was a survey of undergraduate students from several Ecuadorian universities. The statistical techniques applied were mainly exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis and the structural equations modeling.
As a general conclusion of the study it can be remarked that co-creation is a pragmatic vision to be considered and implemented in the university context with positive effects for student and for universities. This thesis confirms that the application of this innovative perspective ensures that competitive advantages are develop at university institutions, allowing to reach higher levels of competitiveness.
