In contemporary times, consumers no longer passively consume products. Rather, they contribute to the design and creation of those products and services (Ziemba et al., 2018). In the same vein, students in a reflexive pedagogy are involved in active knowledge making as they learn. They do not simply receive ready-made facts from teachers or the textbook. Their learning activities actually constitute the creation of knowledge and may expand the frontiers of knowledge beyond existing textbooks or the teachers. Hence, the term prosumers – simultaneous producers and consumers of knowledge. Prosumers are people who produce their own goods and services, with the primary aim of using, and not selling them (Eriksson, 2022). The term prosumer was first used by Alvin Toffler, an American commonly described as a futurist (Kotler, 1984).

Ubiquitous learning makes it possible for students to be knowledge prosumers, that is producers of the knowledge they consume. First, they are able to engage actively anywhere and at any time as a result of new teachnologies. Devices such as personal computers and smartphones make it possible both to access new information about any phenomenon at any time, and to document their personal observations about the phenomenon and share same with other students and their teachers. The motivations for prosumption may be intrinsic, driven by internal factors such as the desire for growth, and they could be extrinsic, that is driven by external forces like pedagogical requirement if prosumption is the adopted pedagogy in the school where they are enrolled for instance (Eriksson, 2022).

We see that prosumers are co-producers of knowledge with teachers and other prosumers in the knowledge production space that ubiquitous learning offers. The concept of prosumption raises a major issue, however. Do prosumers get sufficient credit for their co-creation effort in knowledge production? Some prosumers submit novel ideas to teachers who may not acknowledge their contribution, partly because those ideas are not ‘peer-reviewed’ and so are not considered ‘scientific’ in some contexts. The value of the knowledge may thus be underplayed. On the other hand, where teachers acknowledge the worth of the contributions of students, the teachers, if not ethical, may take credit for the student’s effort. This explains the logic behind prosumers’ reluctance to share knowledge with traditional producers of knowledge.

A 4 min video on prosumers is available at: https://youtu.be/uTgCg8IMDo0

https://youtu.be/uTgCg8IMDo0

See also: https://www.igi-global.com/article/knowledge-sharing-for-cultural-heritage-20/121668