Co-creation and Flex Time Management

3 days ago

6 min read

Promoting Meaningful Participation Amidst Challenges Faced by Working Students in Online Courses.

Current Practice

As we journey with graduate and undergraduate students who work full time , we recognize the need to provide more creative and meaningful support towards successful completion of online courses. Over the last five years, I shared steps for creating vision boards, instituted accountability partner systems and demonstrated schedule tracking checklists during the first few weeks into a course. These activities really helped to set a proactive tone and motivate active participation at the beginning of a semester.

I have observed, however, that by the third week, less students log into synchronous sessions on time, and there are more apologies for absence or the failure to meet task timelines. Some students share that they are in transit, on their home from work, still at work or the home environment is too distracting for them to focus enough to participate. Regarding timely subscription to discussion forums, completing quizzes and submitting class activities or assignments, some students shared that the reason for tardiness or delinquency relate to personal circumstances, ill health, and unavoidable instances where they have address other responsibilities.

After evaluating the factors that hinder my student’s success, I became more intentional towards inspiring student co-creation through flex time management.

I shared my concerns with fellow course instructors in staff meetings and informal academic gatherings and found that they too have similar experiences with students who work and study. For subsequent semesters, I began to brainstorm with other colleagues, ways to promote time-management and experiment more creative ways to enable more meaningful online participation.

According to Dollinger et al. (2018), a profound outcome of students as collaborators in the learning process is called value co-creation. This includes students’ positive responses and reactions to instructions and tasks, their views on concepts being explored, their intellectual competences and dispositions, integrated in parallel with institutional resources, which offers mutual benefits to both learners and facilitators.

An Iterative Process

My journey as an online student was rather rocky at first but I initiated several trials to counter the difficulties. As a result, I advanced to graduate studies and graduated with distinction. I was even asked to return to several orientation sessions to share my ‘coping’ strategies with new students.

As I reflected on what I communicated with those aspiring professionals during 2013, I realized that those ‘strategies’ were still relevant in 2023 and in my current courses. I began to share my own experiences each semester not only at the beginning of each course but reiterate, encourage and motivate through to mid semester and especially as the last lap approached when persons are overwhelmed and on the brink of giving up.

Student co-creation includes citizenship behavior, and their co-creation roles include those of co-producers, participants, change agents and partners. (Zarandi et al. 2022). Like the requirements of being a good citizen, we should endeavor to be respectful and considerate in how we communicate with both facilitators and peers in virtual classrooms.

Öztürk, (2021) describes digital citizenship as “the rules for correct and responsible technology usage that provide guidance to students on how to direct the online world in their personal and academic lives.” As digital citizens we can post our position on academic prompts and review the

responses of others in a timely manner.

We should always provide constructive feedback, initiate friendly debates and provide scholarly evidence to justify our arguments or even extend ideas that we agree with. As we consider how life can be full of undesirable interruptions which lead to many instances of fatigue, stress and ill health of our students, we can understand why many persons end up procrastinating and succumb to their circumstances.

BUT a little goes a long way. In several courses for the past three years, I have intentionally shared my own struggles in briefs ‘teachable’ moments between content focus and assessment activities. Not an epistle of my student life, and not all classes required details of how I was able to overcome specific challenges relating to successful course completion. The approach of discussing ways of countering the challenges head on reaped more benefits in our learning spaces than in previous years.

Flex time management is a term I found myself using as an online student. Now, I share the concept with my students at the beginning of each semester and remind them of the benefits as the course progresses. Unlike ‘spare time’ flex time is not leisure time.

With the flexibility of mobile devices and wireless networks technology (WIFI) we have what I call – flex time. This time can be as little as five minutes – waiting to be picked up, ten minutes - a break in a professional session, 30 minutes to an hour – when you are travelling but not the driver or even two to three hours when you wake up before day break or even on a fight.

Usually, people use these pockets of time, between tasks to browse the internet, interact with social media or even catch up on a drama series. The universal access to online academic spaces, allow persons can use flex time to review the instructions of required class activity or assignment, start the process of research towards a particular task, start or even complete a discussion post, provide feedback to other colleagues, share interesting material related to the course and make progression to just about any aspect of course requirements.

My adult students expressed profound appreciation for the nuggets of wisdom related to how to navigate challenges through the simple yet impactful method of maximizing flex time.

My next objective was to stimulate online participation among students by demonstrating the power of meaningful discussions towards individual and collective success. I shared how I learned a lot from peers who shared interesting views and thought-provoking arguments in their discussion posts. My experience became more fulfilling when I started to contribute as a ‘change agent’ in the discussion forums, rather than just a participant trying to meet deadlines and basic requirements.

A "change agent’" is a person who influences human potential or institutional operations to accomplish an advanced degree of productivity or self-efficacy (Thies, 2013). In this role, I responded to comments related to challenges with understanding content and the demands of being students who work full time, I began sharing motivational clips, time management tips, simplified versions of the content as I understood it, along with links to videos that I found helpful and insights on how we can use the information being explored in real world situations.

Co-creation for Positive Learning Outcomes

Tarı and Mercan (2020) propose that co-creation is a mediator between resources and outcomes. They posit that co-creation fosters more useful relationships between students and instructors and among peers. I continued to share snippets of ‘how we can progress through courses successfully between academic presentations and assessment activities.

There were a few other students who displayed characteristics of a ‘change agent’ in our learning space and I observed that the personalities of the individuals were reflected in what and how they shared their unorthodox insights. One peer was more serious and shared valuable scholarly articles, and another was more jovial and shared jokes and proverbs that were also meaningfully related to concepts being explored in our modules.

This variation created a softer, humanistic balance in the digital learning space and fostered a more collegial relationship beyond academic parameters.

My current students and I established a 5 minute ‘checking in’ period in each synchronous session for courses offered through fully online modalities. We share our progress with using flex time and they are allowed to share suggestions of how they can contribute to co-creation in our online atmosphere.

Through this intentional and consistent practice, I observed how some students emerged into ‘change agents’ and transformed into ‘resource specialists’ within our online academic space while others were motivated to meet the course requirements and attain success.

References

Dollinger, M., Lodge, J. & Coates, H. (2018). Co-creation in higher education: Towards a conceptual model. Journal of Marketing for Higher Education 28 (2), 210-231.

Öztürk, G. (2021). Digital citizenship and its teaching: A literature review. Journal of Educational Technology & Online Learning, 4(1), 31-45.

Tarı, B. & Mercan, H. (2020). Co-creating positive outcomes in higher education: are students ready for co-creation? Journal of Marketing for Higher Education, 32(1), 73–88.

Thies, T. (2013). Student Leaders as Change Agents: Benefits Emerging from a Curricular Change. Visions of Research in Music Education: Vol. 23 , Article 4.

Zarandi, N., Soares, A. & Alves, H. (2022). Student roles and behaviors in higher education co-creation–a systematic literature review. International Journal of Educational Management 36 (7), 1297-1320.

Monique Jackson-Reynolds is a Technology Integration Literacy Specialist and a Lecturer of Language, Literacy and Literature at the Mico University College in Kingston, Jamaica. She recently published STEAM Methodology for 21st Century Educators: Strategic Integration, Fostering Student Assimilation and Scaffolding Innovation in August of 2026, unpacking the many benefits of implementing this dynamic approach to instruction. You can reach Monique through email here.