This paper describes the background to the problem and methodology of a study that explored a reflective new media pedagogy through the design and production of a Web-based learning environment. This environment addresses and invites cancer patients and their supporters to question established social and cultural discourses that shape the experiences of cancer by inviting visitors to create ways to talk about cancer that more closely relate to the uniqueness of their lives and to the characteristics of the disease. Through a collaborative approach to educational media design involving an educational media designer and cancer patients and their supporters, a Web site, http://www.cancershock.com, was produced to support cancer patients and their supporters in creating non-linear, flexible discursive spaces for rewriting social and cultural discourses that shape and inform the experience of cancer in Western, industrialized cultures. This interdisciplinary study presents a design practice influenced by cultural studies approaches to new media pedagogy and drawn from the experience of engaging in collaborative and reflective educational new media design. (Contains 55 references.) (Author/AEF)