Children's Participation Patterns in Online Communities: An Analysis of Israeli Learners in the Scratch Online Community
Interdisciplinary Journal of E-Learning and Learning Objects, (2009)Abstract
Online participation and content contribution are pillars of the Internet revolution and are core
activities for younger generations online. This study investigated participation patterns, users'
contributions and gratification mechanisms, as well as the gender differences of Israeli learners in
the Scratch online community.
The findings showed that: (1) Participation patterns reveal two distinct participation types -
"project creators" and "social participators", suggesting different users' needs. (2) Community
members gratified "project creators" and "social participators" for their investment – using
several forms of community feedback. Gratification at the user level was given both to "project
creators" and "social participators" – community members added them as friends. The majority of
the variance associated with community feedback was explained by seven predictors. However,
gratification at the project level was different for the two participation types - active "project
creators" received less feedback on their projects, while active "social participators" received
more. Project feedback positively correlated with social participation investment, but negatively
correlated with project creation investment. A possible explanation is that community members
primarily left feedback to their friends. (3) No gender differences were found in participation
patterns or in project complexity, suggesting that Scratch provides similar opportunities to both
genders in programming, learning, and participation.