Collaborative knowledge building using a 5 design principles database 6

12 Abstract In this study we describe a mechanism for supporting a community of 13 learning scientists who are exploring educational technologies by helping them to 14 share and collaboratively build design knowledge. The Design Principles Database 15 (DPD) is intended to be built and used by this community to provide an infrastructure 16 for participants to publish, connect, discuss and review design ideas, and to use these 17 ideas to create new designs. The potential of the DPD to serve as a collaborative 18 knowledge-building endeavor is illustrated by analysis of a CSCL study focused on 19 peer-evaluation. The analysis demonstrates how the DPD was used by the researchers 20 of the peer-evaluation study in three phases. In the first phase, design principles were 21 articulated based on a literature review and contributed to the DPD. In the second 22 phase, a peer-evaluation activity was designed based on these principles, and was 23 enacted and revised in a three-iteration study. In the third phase, lessons learned 24 through these iterations were fed back to the DPD. The analysis indicates that such 25 processes can contribute to collaborative development of design knowledge in a 26 community of the learning sciences. Readers of ijCSCL are invited to take part in this 27 endeavor and share their design knowledge with the community.