Seeking Exemplars in the Wild: Exploring How Students Find Design Examples to Support Personalized Learning.

Examples help students learn insights about key domain principles and processes. However, little is known about how students leverage the Web to discover and learn from examples. In a comparative study, seventy undergraduate students leveraged three types of platforms--- search-based, crit-based, and portfolio-based platforms---to find examples that represent contrasting cases of two design principles. Students reported how each platform's features and mechanisms affected their approach. We identify three main strategies students employed for finding examples on the Web: developing keywords, visually comparing multiple examples, and leveraging community feedback to assess example quality. Our results also indicate that, despite giving access to many examples, none of the existing platforms provide explicit support for learning. We distill three guidelines for creating learner-centered online design galleries to help future learners gain design knowledge.