Distributed Construction through Participatory Design

Abstract

We present the implementation of Distributed Constructionism (DC) through a Participatory Design (PD) methodology of an Online Learning community. The students collaborate on the content and functionality development of an online Modern Greek language course, peer review and publish content contributions, and participate in participatory design teams. Participatory design was implemented as a four step process (a) Build bridges with the intended users, (b) Map user needs and suggestions to the system, (c) Develop a prototype, (d) Integrate feedback and continue the iteration. Distributed Constructionism was implemented to enhance the learning experience and community development. Finally Social Network Analysis is employed to quantitatively measure the strength of the online community established and the key role our participatory design team participants played in sustaining this online community.