The design of any piece of technology intended for human use – whether for entertainment, work, or education – is ideally iterative and user-centered. Designers cannot anticipate all the needs of users, but most begin with a prototype and revise it based on user feedback. This is even more true of online learning communities, where designers must understand the needs not just of individual users, but of groups of users and their complex interrelationships as facilitated by the technology. Designers begin with theory, create a prototype, test, and then revise. However, it is not just the technology that can be revised, but also the underlying theory. Technological design and pedagogy have the potential to co-evolve in this new medium.

In this chapter, I will describe in detail one example of this co-evolution: a new perspective on motivation in constructionist learning environments, which evolved through quantitative and qualitative observations of an online learning community called MOOSE Crossing. These observations led to a significant design change to the environment (the addition of a system of “merit badges”), and this in turn led to further reflections on pedagogy.

BACKGROUND: CONSTRUCTIONISM IN A COMMUNITY CONTEXT

In Mindstorms, Seymour Papert has a vision of a “technological samba school.” At samba schools in Brazil, a community of people of all ages gather together to prepare a presentation for Carnival. “Members of the school range in age from children to grandparents and in ability from novice to professional. But they dance together and as they dance everyone is learning and teaching as well as dancing. Even the stars are there to learn their difficult parts” (Papert, 1980, p.178).