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  • From Consuming to Producing

    By Joshua Kim April 28, 2010 9:30 pm EDT

    The thing that sticks with me from my Ph.D. program was being told that the difference between an undergraduate and a graduate student is that grad students produce new knowledge, while undergrads consume. Or maybe it was that professors produce new knowledge, and grad students should move from consumers to producers. Whatever. It made so much sense at the time. Now I realize how wrong this advice is. Nowadays, with the diffusion of social media, blogging, and Web 2.0 tools - everyone can (and should) be producers.

    Our fundamental mistake was to believe (because we were told) that only a few people are good enough to create, and the job of the rest of us is to take what is on offer.

    Wrong.

    You are smart enough to create, to produce. Because it is only when we create something will it be our own. Only when we create (or teach) will we understand. The benefits of producing, creating, and making always come back to the creator. If someone wants to consume what you create then that is wonderful, but should not be your motivation to produce.

    We need to bring this insight to both teaching and our professional lives.

    On the teaching front, we understand that learning needs to be active rather than passive. This means we need to work with our faculty colleagues to design courses around active learning and collaboration. This also means that we need to figure out how to get our students' work out into the world, through open blogs and other methods, so they learn to be producers and participate in the larger conversation.

    In our professional lives we have numerous opportunities to create. People often ask me how I find the time to blog each day. Basically, I try to channel as much of my consumption of professional materials (around learning and technology), into production. So I limit what I intake each day into what could be possibly useful to blog about that night. This "editing" of my consumption diet insures that I stay focussed on what I need to know, and that I'll synthesize and retain the main things that I read, watched, or participated in that day.

    I'm not arguing that we all need to blog. The Web 2.0 world provides plenty of opportunities to create by participating in the conversation. Join discussions around blog posts by commenting. Tweet what you are reading about (Twitter is a great tool for quickly turning consumption into production). Write quick reviews of professional books you are reading for Amazon. Post links to articles and thoughts on Facebook.

    Ideally, we will figure out how to get our students to engage with our curriculum on public, Web 2.0 tools so that they can start learning how to be producers and creators. Thoughts?

    By the way, I don't claim any originality to these thoughts. I've been influenced by:

    --Say Everything: How Blogging Began, What It's Becoming, and Why It Matters, by Scott Rosenberg

    --Long Tail, The, Revised and Updated Edition: Why the Future of Business is Selling Less of More, by Chris Anderson

    --Create Your Own Economy: The Path to Prosperity in a Disordered World, by Tyler Cowen

    --Groundswell: Winning in a World Transformed by Social Technologies, by Charlene Li and Josh Bernoff

    --Tribes: We Need You to Lead Us, by Seth Godin

    Any recommendations to support or argue with my assertions?

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Comments on From Consuming to Producing

  • Amen
  • Posted by Jbrophy , Academic Tech at Keene State College on April 29, 2010 at 9:45am EDT

  • I couldn't agree more. And in addition to getting faculty to accept the premise that students learn best when they have to create, we also need to break out of the mold of the student producing for a one-person audience, the professor. When students (and anyone) create something that is open to the world for comment the level of involvement and learning sky rocket.

  • concise, thought provoking article & interesting resources
  • Posted by Sloane Thompson , Director of Career Development at Indiana University Purdue University Indianapolis (IUPUI) on April 29, 2010 at 9:45am EDT

  • Thanks very much for posting this thought-provoking, concise article with references at the end that I look forward to reading. I plan to share this with students in my career courses next year, with faculty colleagues and the Deans in our school (particularly since we are finalizing our strategic plan for the next five years, which includes some specific objectives related to student learning and encouraging increased use of a variety of teaching approaches. I also plan to tweet about this article this morning, which will simultaneously update my LinkedIn status ... and I've been thinking about blogging as well, though I haven't decided what my focus/foci will be and whether or not I want to commit to this at this time (as a full-time career professional with two children under the age of 3, I try to think carefully about my priorities and time commitments). Thanks again for your article.

  • Posted by Steve on April 29, 2010 at 10:00am EDT

  • Wikinomics, by Don Tapscott, talks about this as well. He uses the word "prosumers" to highlight how allegedly passive consumers now derive value from creating knowledge.

  • 1/2 truths are more dangerous than lies
  • Posted by Lecturer on April 29, 2010 at 10:30am EDT

  • Yes, it is empowering to create and research on one's own. Personal investment is very important to learning. However, the notion that everyone can produce equally is complete and utter rubbish. If all are equally qualified knowledge producers, what need have we for medical specialists? Surely the word of my freshmen is as insightful as that of any cardiologist.

    I am not saying we should stifle creativity by condemning students to years of study before we give them permission to have an idea. But we do need to teach some humility along the way and keep enforcing the idea that the teacher is the teacher for a reason. The idea that all ideas are equally valid is intellectual suicide.

    Meanwhile, other nations drill their kids in the rules of English (and several other languages) and learn their math stone cold. I wonder who our kids will work for to support their blogging habit?

  • a response to "Lecturer"
  • Posted by Joshua Kim at Dartmouth College on April 29, 2010 at 10:45am EDT

  • Hi Lecturer....thanks for jumping into this debate. Appreciate your willingness to approach this critically.

    I would never argue that everyone is an "equally qualified knowledge producer". Of course not. What I am arguing is that the route to producing good ideas is to produce lots of bad and mediocre ones. We all need to practice. We all need our 10,000 hours. People with good ideas and strong competencies are people who have spent years practicing, learning, making mistakes, and improving.

    Just because everyone can produce does not mean that we should read what they write (or film, or draw, or dance, or whatever). We should not be afraid of "too much stuff out there" - as the true experts become even more valuable as filters and guides.

    The other point is that in the act of creating we become better learners. If you are going to say something or teach something you need to know what you are talking about - at least if you ever want someone to listen (or listen again).

    The real question you should be asking is if anyone is going to pay our kids to support their (passive) TV watching habit. We want our kids to find their passions and strengths, and often the best way to do so is to hook up with people and resources that share these attributes.

    Thanks again for debating.....

    Oh...thanks Steve for pointing out Wikinomics.....definitely should be on the list.

  • first graders in a 2.0 world
  • Posted by Education free agent on April 29, 2010 at 1:45pm EDT

  • Thank you for highlighting the "student as producer/co-creator of learning" issue. Your ideas need to keep traveling upstream, not only from graduate to undergraduate education, but also all the way to elementary school. The shift from recipient to producer is already happening with five and six year olds who are blogging and participating on school-based wikis. Their experiences collectively create a new and growing demand on post-secondary education, as well as how we will be measuring performance and success in the not so distant future. Stay tuned!

  • Posted by M.P. on April 30, 2010 at 5:00pm EDT

  • I couldn't agree more. Producing knowledge empowers students, makes learning matter, raises the stakes, and focuses their information-gathering. It can also have real impact on social/political change and/or knowledge in the relevant field. I'm floundering around trying to make my students producers more than consumers this semester in a couple of my classes. For the fall, I've (privately) resolved to make sure every single class I teach has some substantial creator/producer exercise (often enabled by Web 2.0--blogging, wikipedia-article-writing, YouTube, Google Maps, etc.) We'll see what happens.

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