The University of the Hesperides implements co-creation stations for designing its programs.

The programs that make up the educational offering of the Universidad de las Hespérides, are the result of a co-creation process with which the promoting group established the following specific work commissions: Commission on Social Sciences; Commission on Architecture, Design and Visual Arts; Education Commission and Commission on Science and Engineering.

Una vez aprobada la creación de la Universidad de las Hespérides,In April 2019, these commissions were formed by the university authorities (vice-rector, deans and program directors) and future professors of the university, who worked in cocreation stations, a process that is based on a combination of small group conversations, brief presentations and miniconferences.

Co-creation stations allow you to tap into dispersed and tacit knowledge, free choice, the desire to create value, and the power of self-organization, all framed in a new language and approach for designing solutions to complex issues.

The working methodology and operation of each commission were based on, first, the assignment of a responsible person for each program, followed by work meetings to create teamwork for each program. The methodologies used in these meetings were Design Thinking For the first phase of exploration and co-creation for structuring study plans.

The methodology of Design Thinking allows aggregating ideas and expanding the range of possibilities in relation to a project or program, and the methodology of co-creation concrete the possibilities that those ideas have of being more successful.

Both methodologies are based on the premise that knowledge is dispersed among participants and that through interdisciplinary collaboration of experts, better results can be achieved.

The combination of these two methodologies, widely used at the d-school of Stanford University, the Universidad Francisco Marroquín and the School of Innovation of Texas A&M University, among other examples from the academic world, allows for the creation of spaces that foster free exchange of ideas.

You generate a process in which the construction of each participant builds upon the ideas contributed by other participants, and ultimately select among all the ideas that enjoy a higher degree of compatibility and viability.

These methodologies allow for work in parallel, seeking the compatibility of scattered knowledge and the ideas that emerge among participants, from bottom up, rather than working on a one-way conception, top down.

Deans of universities like Harvard, Texas A&M, Stanford and the Universidad Francisco Marroquín have used this combination of methodologies for these purposes in recent years with successful results.

In this case, several working stations were carried out, which dealt with topics such as the skills that the student should acquire, the structure of the program, educational experience, external references to be consulted and documentary queries, among others.

The participants contributed their experience according to their interest in contributing to each of the problem worked out at each station. The first stage is a discussion process to establish the essence of the problem being treated. Next, a type of exercise is carried out. BrainstormingLuego se ensayan multiple proposals through the use of Design Thinking And, finally, the implementation is sought that can complement a greater number of relevant ideas as judged by the group thanks to the use of co-creation techniques. At the end of the process, a draft of the study plan has been obtained, which is sent to the Government Council and the Executive Board.