Students As Prosumers: Learning From Peer-Produced Materials In A Computing Science Course

This paper presents an investigation of a pedagogical approach where student act as prosumers of peer-generated knowledge. A cohort of computing science students were tasked to interview field experts, and then produced a report of the interview results in the form of a short video accompanied by a written summary. The reports were used to facilitate learning about aspects and phases of IT systems life cycle. This paper investigates student and instructor attitudes to and experiences of this pedagogical approach. Our findings suggest that the students were generally not ready for this learning method, which led to the "love it or hate it" split within the observed cohort. While the instructing team was convinced of the benefits of the used pedagogical approach and planned to continue using it in future, they were faced with a number of challenges. The biggest of those challenges was that the instructors had no control over the quality of teaching materials, which affected learning experience of the students. This paper's findings contribute to the understanding of CS student and instructor expectations, attitudes, and experiences of non-traditional teaching and learning activities such as creating videos and reusing student-produced multi-media materials.