Middle school girls struggle to find a voice during their adolescent years. Often they remain quiet, disengaged and isolated from classroom activities. This is commonly referred to as learning-resistant behavior. Although these students are disengaged within the classroom environment, they are often active members of participatory cultures, such as Facebook, YouTube, and other online communities.
A participatory community includes “relatively low barriers to artistic expression and civic engagement, strong support for creating and sharing, mentorship between novice members and experts members, in which all members are convinced that what they contribute will be valued, and members feel a degree of social connection with other participants” (Jenkins “Confronting the Challenges of Participatory Culture...” 3).
Many of these communities exist entirely online, and grow increasingly popular each year. By comparing participatory communities to the educational theories of David Kolb and Bernice McCarthy, there is an opportunity to design interfaces and interactions modeling activities that inspire active learning within an educational environment.
This research offers a framework for a community-based online learning space. Three design studies were completed to form an interactive video system called Video Book. It is meant to inspire meaningful interaction and communication in a time-based format.