Dejan Ljubojevic and Diana Laurillard: Pedagogical Pattern Collector software tool http://www.ld-grid.org/workshops/ASLD11

1. Pedagogical
Pattern
Collector
software
tool
Dejan
Ljubojevic
and
Diana
Laurillard
London
Knowledge
Lab,
Institute
of
Education,
London,
UK
Introduction
This
paper
describes
one
of
the
key
strands
of
the
three-­‐year
ESRC/EPSRC
funded,
research
project
titled
Learning
Design
Support
Environment
(LDSE
http://www.ldse.org.uk).
One
of
the
principal
strategies
adopted
by
the
LDSE
project
is
to
enable
teachers
to
build
on
the
work
of
others
by
providing
the
support
tools
to
assist
them
in
finding,
interpreting,
evaluating,
and,
reusing/redesigning
the
work
of
their
colleagues.
Operationalising
that
strategy
requires
a
way
of
representing
the
theory
and
practice
of
learning
design
so
that
the
analytical
links,
between
the
pedagogical
first
principles
and
the
practice-­‐
instances,
are
exposed
and
offered
to
practitioners
as
support.
The
Pedagogical
Pattern
Collector
(PPC)
tool
is
a
proposal
for
operationally
modelling
design,
abstraction,
and
interpretation
of
pedagogical
patterns.
Underpinning
the
design
of
the
PPC
is
the
Conversational
Framework
(Laurillard,
2002).
The
Conversational
Framework
(CF)
offers
analytical
means
for
dissecting
any
approach
to
teaching
and
learning
(teaching
and
learning
conversation)
and
is
not
value-­‐laden,
that
is,
it
does
not
prescribe,
or
favour,
any
one
approach.
Background
The
appeal
of
establishing
a
successful
model
for
reuse
(of
ideas,
approaches,
processes,
and
products),
in
any
domain,
is
at
least
twofold.
Firstly
it
serves
to
optimally
mobilise
the
domain’s
resources:
the
existing
aggregate
of
materials,
solutions
and
tools,
and
its
workforce
–
by
reducing
the
doubling
of
effort
and
therefore
the
cost.
Secondly,
through
this
optimised
mobilisation
it
leads
to
sharing
and
evolution
of
the
best
practices,
and
ultimately
innovation.
The
crucial
prerequisite
for
building
a
successful
model
for
reuse
in
any
domain
is
a
solid
foundation
of
conceptions
about
a
domain-­‐intrinsic
unit
of
reuse
that
are
shared
across
the
stakeholder
groups.
These
generic
criteria
when
applied
to
the
domain
of
learning
design
do
not
read
all
that
comfortably.
On
one
hand
the
optimisation
of
teaching
effort
and
resourcing
is
demanded
by
the
significant
changes
in
HE
in
the
UK
and
globally
(HEFCE,
2006;
HEFCE-OLTF,
2011; D.
Laurillard
&
Masterman,
2009),
and
on
the
other
hand,
the
prerequisite
for
that
optimisation,
the
shared
conception
about
the
unit
of
reuse,
is
absent
despite
significant
effort
(Grainne
Conole
&
Jones,
2010;
Isobel Falconer,
Janet Finalay,
&
Fincher,
2011; LAMS).
Often
cited
reasons
for
this
absence
of
shared
conceptions
about
the
unit
of
reuse
inside
the
teaching
and
learning
domain
are
the
disciplinary
and/or
institutional
idiosyncrasies,
as
well
as
the
technical
interoperability
issues,
such
as
granularity
of
focus,
that
are
hard
to
overcome.
And
yet,
other
domains,
of
at
least
equal
complexity,
such
as:
engineering,
medicine,
music
etc.,
have
successfully
overcome
this
‘shared
conception’
hurdle.
This
conceptualisation
problem
(the
elusive
answer
to
the
question
‘what
are
we
talking
about
when
1

2. talking
teaching
and
learning?’)
is
in
the
way
of
the
theoretical
and
practical
progress
in
the
field.
This
is
manifested
in
the
way
the
field’s
capacity
to
innovate
is
plagued
by
the
lack
of
the
foundation
for
the
exchange
of
ideas,
models,
tools,
materials
etc.
It
is
important
to
note
that
the
‘foundation
for
exchange’
does
not
pertain
to
the
much
researched
‘interoperability’
issue,
but
to
the
way
the
pedagogical
content
of
the
learning
design
is
made
explicit
for
the
practitioners,
and
the
designers
alike,
to
help
them
interpret
and
consequently
reuse
designs
across
the
disciplinary,
institutional,
and
individual-­‐practice
boundaries.
What
is,
and
what
is
not
a
Pedagogical
Design
Pattern?
The
Pedagogical
Design
Pattern
(PDP)
captures
the
generic
description
of
the
pedagogical
essence,
the
epistemic
property,
of
a
piece
of
learning
design
that
successfully
achieves
the
learning
outcome
it
was
designed
for;
it
describes
the
mechanisms
of
students’
‘coming
to
know’.
This
description
is
systematised
by
the
use
of
the
5
cognitive
activities
from
Conversational
Framework
(Laurillard,
2002),
these
are:
acquisition,
inquiry,
discussion,
practice,
and,
production.
Each
teaching-­‐learning
activity
statement
in
the
PDP
description
is
assigned
one
of
these
categories,
and
composites
are
enabled
by
the
use
of
Segments
that
aggregate
two
or
more
statements
(and
their
cognitive
activity
assignees)
to
describe
more
complex
design
structures.
The
operational
choice
of
Conversational
Framework
taxonomy
is
not
mandatory,
that
is
the
pattern
representations
inside
the
PPC
are
loosely
coupled
with
Laurillard’s
taxonomy,
and
this
is
potentially
a
very
appealing
feature…
The
most
successful
designs
are
not
those
that
try
to
fully
model
the
domain
in
which
they
operate,
but
those
that
are
``in
alignment''
with
the
fundamental
structure
of
that
domain,
and
that
allow
for
modification
and
evolution
to
generate
new
structural
coupling.
(Winograd
&
Flores,
1986,
pp
53)
For
example,
the
patterns
inside
the
PPC
browser
are
presently
classified
using
Bloom’s
Taxonomy
(Bloom,
1956),
and
can
be
(additionally)
(re)classified
using
Kolb’s
Learning
Cycle
(Kolb,
1984).
Similarly,
the
present
operational
design,
underpinned
by
the
Conversational
Framework
(Laurillard,
2002)
classification
of
the
learner
cognitive
activities,
can
be
substituted
with
learning
activities
taxonomy
(Conole,
2007)
with
operational
integrity
intact.
This
would
serve
to
capture
wider
audience
that
may
have
particular
preference
in
this
regard.
All
other
aspects
of
the
learning
design
are
underplayed
(not
omitted)
in
our
approach,
to
allow
for
high
interpretability
of
the
epistemic
content
of
the
design
by
the
potential
reuser.
Other
aspects
of
the
learning
design
that
also
lend
themselves
to
design
pattern
approach
are:
curricular
(one
curricular
design
pattern
example
is
an
instance
from
the
Spiral
Curriculum
family,
called
Simplifying
Conditions
Methodology
from
Elaboration
Theory
–
(Reigeluth,
1999)),
and,
logistic
(one
logistic
design
pattern
example
is
an
instance
from
the
Role
Play
family,
called
Jigsaw
Pattern
-­‐
(Grainne
Conole,
McAndrew,
&
Dimitriadis,
2010)).
2

3. Pedagogical
Pattern
Collector
The
Pedagogical
Pattern
Collector
(PPC)
is
online
software
tool
(tinyurl.com/ldsepatterns)
with
three
distinct
stages:
browser,
designer,
and,
abstractor,
corresponding
respectively
to
identification/adoption,
designing/adaption,
and,
abstraction
of
teaching
practice.
Two
typical
use
case
scenarios
of
the
way
the
PPC
is
used
are
depicted
in
the
Figure
1.
Figure
1
–
Two
typical
use
case
scenarios
of
the
PPC
use
Use
Case
I
–
Adopt
and
Adapt
existing
Pedagogical
Design
Pattern
The
browser
(Stage
1
in
Figure
1)
is
used
for
searching
through
the
repository
of
learning
outcomes
and
the
associated
pedagogical
design
patterns.
When
the
user
identifies
the
potentially
suitable
pattern
(Stage
1
in
Figure
1),
the
browser
aids
interpretation
by
providing
up
to
3
instance
examples
for
each
pattern
from
as
disparate
disciplines
as
possible.
Furthermore,
the
browser
also
allows
the
user
to
input
their
own
instantiation
parameters
into
the
pattern.
This
marks
the
end
of
the
Adoption
phase;
the
adopted
pattern
is
then
imported
into
the
design
area
(Stage
2
in
Figure
1)
and
the
user
can
edit
the
whole
pattern
to
adapt
it
to
their
specific
requirements.
This
Use
Case
ends
with
the
reuser
either
exporting
the
design
in
an
XML
format
that
can
be
potentially
‘played’,
pending
the
development
of
the
PPC
player,
or
printing
out
the
textual
description
of
the
design.
Use
Case
II
–
Express
own
teaching
practice
and
generalise
for
others
to
reuse
The
design
editor
(Stage
A
in
Figure
1)
is
used
for
designing
the
user’s
own
teaching
instance.
When
the
design
stage
is
complete
the
design
is
migrated
to
the
Abstractor
(Stage
B
in
Figure
1),
which
offers
the
tools
for
abstracting
a
design
instance
into
a
generic
design
pattern.
Use
Case
II
ends
with
the
PPC
sending
the
email
to
the
research
team
with
the
complete
materials
(including:
design
instance
description
of
pedagogy,
sequence,
timings,
and
tools
and
3

4. resources,
and
the
designer’s
generalisation
recommendation),
so
that
the
newly
created
instance
can
be
inserted
into
the
repository
of
PPC
patterns.
Figure
2
–
the
browser
part
of
the
PPC
Figure
3
–
the
designer
part
of
the
PPC
4

5. Figure
4
–
the
abstractor
part
of
the
PPC
Suggested
activities
for
the
workshop
The
two
use
cases
described
earlier
could
be
used
in
the
session
to
allow
the
participants
to
evaluate
the
PPC
tool.
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