| Technological affordances, in conjunction with the adaptive sociologies of their use, have resulted in an increasingly dynamic virtual ecology. Dubbed Web 2.0, this ecology is characterized by open source, social networking and user generated content. While the instructional design community has responded vigorously to these developments, there remains evidence of a growing gap between Web 2.0 potentialities and instructional design practices. Web 2.0 affordances are also generative of a variety of self-organizing, communities, some of which qualify as dynamic learning communities. Few studies have approached instructional design from the perspective of these generative communities and knowledge of these critical developments remains limited.;Online game modding communities were identified as one particularly productive example of this generative phenomenon. A Delphi group, consisting of twelve participants---all leaders or lead users---was recruited and situated in an online forum. Discussions lasted six weeks. Question initiated forum threads, and two surveys and a culminating email questionnaire were used to collect data. A grounded theory methodology was used in analysis of the data and resulted in the compilation of a variety of operant infrastructures and learning processes via open and axial coding. Theoretical sampling resulted in the further identification of four organizing interrogatives along with corresponding components. Scalable meta-forums, a protean guild format, cloud services and a co-agent agency were identified as key infrastructures; while building network complexity, failure apprenticeship, system balancing, and moving towards community collaboration were identified as the key processes successfully employed by online gaming communities. Congruencies between these generatively designed infrastructures and processes, connectivist instructional design, and current instructional practices were established. The logical extension of such congruency is the development of more relevant, effective and efficient online instructional models. A matrix-based design informant called the Co-Agency Model was configured to this end and recommendations made for utilization by instructional designers and their institutions. |
