The impact of content co-creation on academic achievement

The literature acknowledges that deeper comprehension of content can be realised when students actively create their own learning materials. However, studies measuring the impact of students co-creating content on their academic performance are limited. Furthermore, there is a significant lacuna in our knowledge about the impact of learning styles on the efficacy of content co-creation. Situated within a constructivist learning paradigm, this study examines the impact on academic performance of students creating course content in two distinctly different ways. The first involves students using an e-learning platform to develop multiple choice questions based on course content. The second involves students using a range of audio-visual tools to create streaming videos that explain module content to their peers. The study uses an experimental design to measure quantitatively the effectiveness of both co-creation assignments, making a significant contribution to our knowledge of the efficacy of content co-creation. We find that both co-creation assignments had a statistically significant impact on academic performance. We also examine whether students’ learning styles have an impact on the effectiveness of content co-creation finding that reflective (versus active) learners and sequential (versus global) learners gain more from co-creation.