Mr. Moo's First RPG: Rules, Discussion and the Instructional Implications of Collective Intelligence on the Open Web

Imagine an active online learning community of writers, artists, and designers, many spending more than eight hours a week composing projects. In this community, young people, primarily between the ages of 18-26, regularly critique, facilitate, and support each other in their composition activities. They are motivated to participate by their shared interest in their creative work. In the age of Wikipedia, this might not seem particularly novel, but what I am describing is an online discussion board, RPGmakerVX.net. Elsewhere, I have presented a general outline of the kinds of individuals involved in this community and the way that the site as a whole functions as an open learning environment (Owens, 2010). In this essay, I present a case study of one participant in this community. His username is Mr. Moo, and at the time I interviewed him, he was a 19 year old college student from Calgary, Canada. He created his first role-playing game, Prelude of Identity, when he was eighteen. After providing a conceptual context for this case study on collective intelligence, I suggest that the discussion board rules and interaction enable a dialogue around composition that gives Mr. Moo a valuable learning experience while producing a role-playing game. The