Implications

7.2.1. Managerial Implications for Practice

Some significant implications emerge from the research’s findings. Our study in section 3 suggests that trust in faculty has a positive effect on perceived value. This conveys that different employees will have a different impact on value perception, the role performed by the employees affects value perceptions. Perceived value is a vital element for setting up a student loyalty platform. The managerial implication is that there is a need to minimize perceptions of sacrifice before students enroll on the program. The importance of perceived service value as a major form of the customers' assessment of services has been acknowledged in the literature. As such, the study identified the factors that have an impact on perceived service value and that have implications for formulating strategies that add value for students during their learning experience.

Universities seek to be viewed as customer-oriented, as this can positively impact important relational outcomes such as satisfaction, retention, and positive word of mouth. The present study emphasizes the importance of HEIs comprehending the appropriate co-creation approaches and processes.

Understanding students’ intention to co-create can help universities maintain or gain competitive advantage through customer co-creation, student suggested/influenced improvements and innovations (Robinson & Celuch, 2016). The result from the current investigation emphatically suggests that co-creation of value is important in shaping students’ perception of value of the university experience. HEIs which pay more attention to this are more likely to enrich the students’

experience.

HE managers, educational developers and instructors should be aware that when students engage in

154 participation and citizenship behaviors, it impacts their evaluations of service quality, their feelings of satisfaction, perceptions of goal attainment, and behavioural intentions. As our systematic literature in section 4 shows, there are several approaches to the process of co-creation that institutions can pursue. HEIs have tremendous potential to devise strategies for leveraging students’ participation and their inputs as an unlimited resource (Torkzadeh et al., 2020). HEIs need to find ways to devise the most adequate approaches depending on the profile of the institution, the resources available, the area of study, etc.

Co-creation in HE places students at the centre of the process, rather than policymakers or professionals, and has significant implications for process management, such as how HE innovations are developed and how risk is managed in the innovation process. Moreover, it implies that student co-production is improving the quality and impact of existing HE services and bringing students' experience together with participative planning to generate new approaches to HE services (Radnor et al., 2014). Findings from recent research suggest that HEIs can benefit from student co-creation.

Thus, it could be argued that some types of co-creation behavior like student citizenship behavior need to be learned and practiced by students before graduation to prepare them to provide critical contributions to their future jobs. This might require university administrators to become better familiar with and nurture the student citizenship behavior and participation behavior concept in students.

While some students may get involved in curriculum co-designing activities for personal reasons (such as fun, enjoyment, interest, and experience), others may participate for external reasons (such as gaining peer recognition, promotion, social identification, and rewards). HEIs’ must understand such dynamics in order to devise an effective strategy. Furthermore, HEI should develop or implement various co-creation strategies that enhance student’s perceived competence. The more confident students are in their talents, the more likely they are to actively engage in their co-creator role.

We Identified that the HEIs were engaging and involving students in their educational services process to allow them to co-create. Moreover, the main student’s co-creation roles in HE are presented. Our findings provide educators and scientists with the required information supported by different investigations to consider the integration of educational games with their current

155 learning method.

The encouraging results, gained inspire lecturers to implement GBL activities in their courses. These findings enable us to provide HEIs managers with a set of recommendations regarding leveraging the GBL to enhance the HE experience.

7.2.2. Implications for theory

Past research has made well-recognized contributions towards the study of the gamification of education and GBL environment. However, few empirical studies have investigated how the GBL method affects co-creation, and satisfaction. Section 1 and 2 contribute to present preliminary results and the underlying idea of the activity.

Theoretically, this research contributes to existing knowledge by providing an integrated and conceptualized GBL, perception of value, customer value co-creation behavior and satisfaction in the context of a HE. While existing literature has not yet inspected the critical role of GBL in influencing student's co-creation behavior and student perception of value, this study investigates how GBL can lead to students' participation and citizenship behavior so as to create values for the university and themselves. It is worth noting that we also provide a broad discussion of the new study path between students' desire to co-create and their understanding of value in GBL in HE.

This path had not been studied before in the literature and a better understanding of it increased the theoretical and practical contribution of this dissertation.

In addition, this study specifically adds to research using GBL as an innovative learning method during COVID-19 epidemics and beyond. The categories, features, and measurements of the game in HE training and the effectiveness of the training system are presented in Section 2. The findings of these sections and the study show how GBL affects student satisfaction and co-creation behavior as well as their understanding student's perception of the value of GBL in HE.

The findings provide insights for those who might be designing a student satisfaction survey for use in the other regions. Surveys developed in the studied universities do not necessarily reflect the major attributes that might impact students’ satisfaction in other research settings. Students in the current

156 study were primarily concerned with GBL techniques. GBL, which is not addressed in most student satisfaction in HE studies. Moreover, our analysis uncovered a number of students’ perception of value consequences.

At the level of student co-creation, previous research has yielded different findings on the importance and impact of this factor on the education system. This thesis lists and classifies the various strategies and platforms for students to co-create their HE experience. In addition, the analysis in the second Systematic Literature Review (Section 4) identified motivational and educational benefits for students and educational and competitive benefits for HEIs. The presented results are considered to be the most comprehensive results, since in addition to the facilities and recreational activities that have already appeared in the literature, it encompasses co-creation antecedents identified.

Moreover, Section 4 maps co-creation strategies in HE for the first time.

This thesis critically analyzes and critically discusses the state of the art of student co-creation in HE and the approaches that higher education institutions use to engage students. This study helps to clarify the model of student co-creation in HE and to identify research gaps and further research opportunities by providing a map of existing research. The third review of the systematic literature (Section 5) sheds light on the process and approaches of co-creation in HE used by HELs. In addition, the findings provide a map of the co-creation patterns that students play and their co-creation behaviors.

7.3. Limitations and Future Lines of research