Research Summary

In my research, I focus on applying the constructionist philosophy of education to the design of online communities. The word "constructionism" was first coined by Seymour Papert to describe an approach to education which advocates learning through design and construction activities, learning through working on personally meaningful projects. My students and I study how to create Electronic Learning Communities by applying these educational ideas to online community design. In such communities, participants learn in a self-motivated, peer-supported fashion. Community members provide technical support, emotional support, and an appreciative audience for completed work. My research focuses on how to design environments to make this sort of learning possible.

Research Methodology

I describe my research methodology as "activist learner-centered design." I begin with a set of social goals I would like to achieve--for example promoting professional community for media researchers, or getting children excited about learning reading, writing, and computer programming. Then I do a needs analysis through field work with the target user population. Next, I design a first prototype system. An iterative design cycle follows: results of formative evaluation with users lead to changes to the system design. Finally, I release the system to a larger population of users and do a summative evaluation of its effectiveness. That summative evaluation includes use of both quantitative (pre/post tests, log file analysis) and qualitative methods (participant-observer ethnography, clinical-style interviews).

Future Directions for My Research

• Extensibility. To what extent will end users have meaningful control over graphical avatar worlds? Will people be able to use this new medium expressively to make personal meanings? What are the technical and HCI challenges in making this possible?
• Constructionist Learning Potential. Can end-user extensible and programmable graphical worlds function as successful learning environments? What subject matter is best suited to this medium? What tools can help maximize the learning potential? Which end-user construction activities are pedagogically valuable, and which are merely time-consuming? How can we increase the amount of time users spend in pedagogically valuable activities?
• Scalable Learning. In too many educational research projects, the researchers provide extensive support for the children's learning. With two researchers standing behind each child, it's no wonder that learning goals are achieved. These results often don't translate into real-world learning situations. The special promise of the Internet is to be able to provide peer support for learning. My hope is to be able to design systems that take advantage of this social support to create scalable learning solutions.

Other Important Issues for the Field

A few issues I believe are particularly important to the future of the field are:

• Methodological approaches. How can we online communities be studied? What methodologies are available to us as a field? There's an awful lot of punditry out there masquerading as research. How do we support the growth of more solid scholarship?
• Expressive avatars. How do people communicate in this medium? How can it be improved?
• Design of virtual spaces. In the real world, we understand a lot about a space (its inhabitants, activities, etc.) implicitly through architectural cues. How can we make better use of architectural design to make virtual spaces more useful to their inhabitants?
• Financial models. How do people make money in the online communities business? What kinds of business models are viable?

Selected Publications

• "The Day After Net Day: Approaches to Educational Use of the Internet." Convergence, forthcoming spring 1998.
• Community Support for Constructionist Learning. Computer Supported Collaborative Work: The Journal of Collaborative Computing 7: 47-86, 1998.
• Pianos, Not Stereos: Creating Computational Construction Kits. With Mitchel Resnick and Fred Martin. " Interactions September/October 1996, pp. 40-50.
• Finding One's Own Space in Cyberspace. Technology Review, January 1996, pp. 48-54.
• Cyberspace is Not Disneyland: The Role of the Artist in a Networked World Commissioned by The Getty Art History Information Program, 1995.
• The MediaMOO Project: Constructionism and Professional Community. With Mitchel Resnick. Convergence 1:1, pp 94-109, Spring 1995.
• Approaches To Managing Deviant Behavior In Virtual Communities. Panel Discussion presented at CHI 94 in Boston, MA, April 1994. Organizer and panelist: Amy Bruckman. Panelists: Pavel Curtis, Cliff Figallo. Moderator: Brenda Laurel. Proceedings of CHI 94 (Boston, MA, April 24-April 27, 1994). New York: Association for Computing Machinery.