Pedagogical patterns symposium

Planet Project – exploring the application of design patterns for web 2.0

Planet website: http://patternlanguagenetwork.org

Positional papers: http://purl.org/planet/Groups.CAL09/

Twitter stream: http://search.twitter.com/search?q=cal09ptns

Also scroll down to see dynamic twitter stream

• A means of capturing proven design solutions to a known problems
• They are written as problems, with solutions. The solution can be applied a million times over never the same twice. Work builds on Alexander from Architecture, then applied in software design and now education.
• What is a good solution to a recurring problem?
• Despite the wider adoption for design approach there are still questions for the methodological basis of patterns.
• Series of positional papers on the Planet website.

Nicole Schadewitz – OU Identifying design patterns in international collaborative learning

• 2 contrasting case studies
• What is the role of methodology and theory in pattern mining in learning communities?
• Are there universal patterns supporting the design of international learning communities? If nt how can a pattern capture the success of a solution but also report on limitations across learning contexts?
• 2 studies – long-term ethnographically informed study, collaborative design in HK/Korean/Taiwanes/Austrian teams
• Case 1: What problems arose when collaborating over a distance
• 11patterns – wiki: evaluation by international community
• Practitioners didn’t feel ownership of the patterns
• Global resolution: local tutors predominately instruct local teams how can you support global virtual teams?  
• Case 2: Study 14 weeks, find international patterns self-directed learning, collaborative design in  mixed EU teams, research team: face to face workshop, synchronous wiki posting
• 20 patterns – at least 3 examples rating/voting for validation
• Group leader selection – the students explicitly select a group leader
• Shifting work medium: Shift work medium over time based on changing needs

What’s different/similar?
Case 1 design solutions in agreement with all team members
Case 2 elf-directed learning in international teams
Why learning? Identifying values is important to design pattern mining
Context in which patterns are valid: limitation and strength of a pattern
Pattern mining is really a design process – ill-defined, wicked, value driven, synergetic – design pattern is like a designed product or system – problem-solutions co-evolution first idea/insight
Misuse/adaptation to new context – new design pattern?
Internationally and generally valid patters possible.

Problem – bad design Yishay Mor
The Planet methodology

• What is the problem design patterns try to address – bad design
• The design divide – gap bet those who have expertise to develop high quality tools and resource and those who don’t
• Alexander’s idea of democratizing
• The world is changing – fast, faster
• Teachers are learners, students are researchers, we are all designers of our own and our learners’ experiences
• Plant – demonstrate an effective communit0-based mechanism for capturing and representing successful practice so it can be shared across different context
• Series of themed workshops – this is the problem I had and this is how I solved it, develop a prototype and refine
• Didn’t end up with a nicely formulated set of patterns which can be based on, much more local and contextualised
• Case stodies workshop, pattern mining workshops, future scenarios workshop
• Telling a good story is not easy
• Pattern – the three hats: one tells a story, second takes notes, third tells the story to a wider audience
• Patternlanguagenetworg.org
• http://www.slideshare.net/yish.cal-09-mor-warburton

Do you believe in patterns? Christian Kohls and Till Schummer
Challenges in pattern mining
1.    mining methods
2.    agreement on findings
3.    confidence level
4.    usefulness

Online training support – applying a set of patterns to support this
1.    Rehearsal: test run of the online training session
2.    Invisible co-host – never do a training alone, second person assists and can answer questions, provides links, observation
3.    Prepared examples – demonstrating some software use of good examples to illustrate the use, use examples that are real and meaningful

Challenges in pattern mining
1.    Hard to get to patterns, partly because they are very volatile, when is the start and finish of a seminar?

Methods
Inductive approaches – personal retrospectivon – individual contributions, sociological interviewing others, mining workshops – community contributions, artifactual observe and analyse Kerth and Cunningham, 1997; DeLano
Deductive approaches – by pure argument – derive new patterns, experimental – testing existing patterns

Agreement on findings
Pattern in the real world, recurrent structure – eg the essence of online trainings
Might be too abstract ie describing an online training only in terms of that applies to all web events, incomplete – eg describing an online training but leaving out some essential elements
Agreement on the form
Agreement on function
Agreement on aesthetics
Subjective vs. objective knowledge across these three things

Confidence
This could be a solution but its never been tested, if used once a little more confident, a re-test design – maybe just coincidence, a recurrent design – pattern

Usefulness
Interesting design patters; design patterns; general patters
Till Schummer – Different perspectives for the pattern scout
Pattern language for supervising PhD students
Patterns as a tool for organisational learning
What is the role of values for the creation/use/whatever of educational design patterns in education/design/whatever?

What is design – Mok create meaningful connections among people, ideas at technology shaping the way people understand their relationships with new products
CoxL design is what links creativity and innovation. It shapes ideas to become practical and attractive propositions for users and customers
Crawlue – making sense of how people live and behave, and drawing insights from the observations has always been at the heart of what the best designers do
Design – align up to then conflicting values and features of the wolrd
Challenge 1: We can only understand the conflict by closely looking at the forces and the context – Heidegger – all requirements are situated – you can only understand a design situation when you are in the situation
Challenge 2: All requirements are related. Alexander – interpret the world as a system of connected forces./values/requirements
Challenge 3: Whenever we improve a system we change the network of interacting forces/values Rittel and Webber – wicked problems, Schon: reflection in action

An example pattern – student managed schedule
Context – supervisor and student agree topic, student starts
Problem – force students are independently managing their time, counterforce they aren’t good at doing it.
Additional forces – discrepancy bet plan and reality, p
Values: establishing trust, embrace failure, embrace change etc
Solutions – social – student creates schedule etc
Related to design-based research – design interventions and test them in our teaching

Summary
Pattern writing helps to reflect on values and forces
Patterns for Pattern Scouts help in the analysis process
Patterns can be descriptive, visionary, both
Validation still required but not trivial – how to validate design, how to validate creativity

Cognitive learning efficiency through the use of design patterns in teaching Gwen Kolfschoten et al
Can we find evidence for the effect of design patterns in learning, beyond direct efficiency?
Cognitve load theory – working memory and long-term memory information storage in schemas, automation of schemas, chunking information you can store more in your working memory
Experts vs. novices – larger schema, automated schema, better classified and more accessible schema schema are inter-related based on solution principle than domain, pattern recognition

Proposition
Design patterns constitute design efficiency for novices
Design patterns do not constitute design efficiency for experts
The use of design patterns in learning to design will increase the quality of schema build in memory and this improve quality and efficiency of learning the domain and the possibilities with respect to design

Conclusions

Design patterns are efficient in design; are only useful when no other schema are constructed yet (novice) experts first need to build new schema to be able to use them effectively, the structure of the patterns offers a basis for building higher quality schema than a generic bottom up learnin