ID113 Keele Curriculum – Co-Create Network

The Idea

The Keele Curriculum – Co-Create Network is a proposal to establish a clear, coordinated, and accessible approach for students, employers, and alumni to shape Keele’s courses in meaningful and manageable ways. Currently, curriculum input from these groups takes place in pockets across the University, often inconsistently, with the same employers or students sometimes approached multiple times by different teams. This can lead to duplication of effort, missed opportunities, and uneven experiences for both academics and contributors. 

At the same time, there are clear examples where co-creation is working extremely well, with pockets of strong practice already embedded across the institution. However, these successes are not always visible, celebrated, or shared across disciplines, limiting opportunities to learn from one another and build on what is already working effectively. 

The Co‑Create approach would bring existing activity into a more connected network, making it easier for academics to access timely, relevant feedback to inform programme design and development. It aims to ensure that students, employers and alumni feel genuinely valued and listened to, and that their contributions are meaningfully embedded within programme structures. This includes fair compensation for students’ time when contributing to curriculum discussions, supporting more inclusive participation, while drawing on Keele’s established relationships with employers and alumni to avoid duplication and build on what already exists. 

The Co‑Create Network seeks to introduce greater consistency, fairness and clarity to curriculum collaboration at Keele, while recognising this represents a shift from more localised and informal approaches. Through light‑touch coordination, clearer routes for engagement, and improved use of existing insights and partnerships, it reduces duplication and makes participation more straightforward for both academics and contributors. Crucially, it is designed to support academic teams by streamlining access to feedback and connections, without adding to workload, while still allowing flexibility within a more coordinated, university‑wide approach. 

Why This Idea Should Be Considered

This idea directly supports Keele’s ambition to deliver future focused, relevant, and high-quality courses. Employers increasingly expect graduates to be well prepared for modern work, students expect their voices to matter, and alumni want meaningful ways to stay connected. A single coordinated network, with students explicitly recognised and valued as partners in curriculum development, will reduce duplication, make it easier for academics to access useful insights, and create a more consistent experience for contributors. By paying or formally recognising students for their time, Keele demonstrates fairness and inclusivity, removing barriers to participation. Overall, this approach strengthens the quality, credibility and real-world alignment of Keele’s curricula. 

While fair financial compensation for student contributions is an important principle, the Co-Create Network could also incorporate meaningful non-financial recognition where appropriate. This may include formal recognition through transcripts, digital badges, employability awards, leadership accreditation, or priority access to development opportunities. Offering a range of recognition options would ensure inclusivity, reflect current financial constraints, and still clearly signal that students’ time, expertise and lived experience are valued as a core part of curriculum development. 

How We Would Implement This Idea

Keele’s Institute for Innovation and Teaching Excellence (KIITE) team, could support the co-ordination and development of the Co‑Create Network, building on its existing expertise in curriculum design and its established community of practice. Rather than introducing a new layer of activity, this approach would strengthen and connect existing practices across the University by bringing them into a more coordinated, supported structure. 

Working in partnership with colleagues from the Employer & Partnerships Team, Careers, Alumni Relations and the Students’ Union, KIITE would guide a small cross‑university group to grow and align the current Curriculum Design Community of Practice (CD CoP). This would create a shared space for interdisciplinary insight while still supporting course‑specific input, ensuring programmes benefit from both broader perspectives and discipline expertise. 

Through this network, KIITE could offer a light‑touch, guided collaboration approach, helping programme teams clarify what type of feedback is needed, identify appropriate contributors (students, employers, alumni), and select the most effective way to gather insight. This would reduce duplication of effort across the institution, streamline engagement activity, and make better use of existing relationships and mechanisms. 

Importantly, the emphasis would be on helping staff to integrate feedback meaningfully into programme design, rather than simply gathering it. The KIITE Curriculum Design Team would partner with academic colleagues to interpret feedback, turn it into clear, actionable design choices, and ensure it contributes to both programme quality and the student learning experience, while also recognising and celebrating the effective practices teams already have in place. 

What Success Would Look Like

Success means academics can easily access high-quality insights when designing or refreshing programmes. Students, recognised and valued as partners in curriculum development, feel their voices genuinely matter, and those who take part are compensated fairly. Employers and alumni report that contributing is simple, worthwhile and not repetitive. 

While it will require an initial, one-off investment of effort and time to establish and support this approach, it will ultimately create a more sustainable and efficient process that better respects everyone’s time, effort, and workload. 

In addition to supporting programme design and major curriculum refreshes, the Co-Create Network could be used selectively to inform continuous programme enhancements. This would allow teams to draw on targeted insights from students, employers or alumni where appropriate, without embedding additional requirements into every review cycle. Used in this way, the Network would enhance existing quality processes by providing timely, relevant perspectives when they add most value. 

The Co-Create Network is not intended to replace existing student feedback mechanisms or routine course review processes, but to complement them by enabling earlier, more dialogic and applied input into curriculum design. While current feedback provides valuable evaluation of existing courses, Co-Create would focus on forward-looking insight from a wider range of contributors, including employers and alumni, at key development points. By coordinating this activity centrally, the Network aims to reduce ad hoc requests, streamline engagement, and make participation optional and proportionate, thereby minimising additional workload for course leads. Contributors would be selected through transparent criteria aligned to the purpose of each collaboration, ensuring diversity of perspectives while keeping involvement targeted and manageable in practice. 

Over time, this approach supports the development of courses that are more relevant, coherent and aligned with industry needs, enhancing the student experience, strengthening graduate outcomes, and fostering a more connected Keele community.  

The Co‑Create Network is positioned as a supporting process, designed to work within existing University structures and align with external expectations (including OfS), rather than adding a new layer of complexity. It builds on, shares and celebrates existing good practice across the institution, helping to reduce duplication and make more effective use of established approaches. By offering a structured yet flexible way to engage students, employers and alumni, it supports meaningful, proportionate collaboration while respecting staff capacity. Ultimately, success is a university where course development is genuinely collaborative, delivering clear benefits for staff, students and partners alike.