Purpose: The paper discusses the use of co-design for staff professional learning within higher education. It suggests that three distinct approaches to professional learning can be characterised as help-yourself platforms/services, drive-by workshops and co-design workshops. It makes pragmatic suggestions for where co-design might be used and heuristics for its successful use, based upon the authors' collective experiences. Design/methodology/approach: This practitioner paper presents a case-study of co-design in a university context. Staff from across disciplinary boundaries were brought together to co-design novel learning experiences for students for a non-traditional context. Findings: Findings from a case study are used to highlight the strengths of a co-design approach, as understood through the lenses of networked learning and self-determination theory. It juxtaposes co-design for staff learning with other approaches and finds it to be valuable and underutilised. Research limitations/implications: The research discusses a single case study involving two workshops with a sample size of 112 participants. It is included as an example of co-design for professional learning in higher education. Originality/value: Co-design for professional learning in higher education is poorly understood and presently underutilised. This paper addresses this gap by presenting an example of co-design for professional learning in higher education and theorising its significance.