Pattern language network for web 2.0 learning
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This project aimed to develop and demonstrate an effective community-based mechanism for capturing and sharing successful practice, based on the pattern approach. A pattern describes an effective solution to a recurrent problem embedded in a specific context and is characterised by being drawn from successful practice rather than from theory. Patterns are easy and intuitive to use, so supporting transfer of practice to new contexts. However, the process of eliciting and capturing patterns from authentic practice is not trivial and is rarely an inclusive community-based activity. It is this problem that the project has sought to address.
Executive Summary
To achieve its aims the project (Planet) worked with a wide range of educational practitioners to develop an effective process for pattern capture. The overall approach of the project was to invite practitioners to provide case studies of their successful practices, particularly around web 2.0 and education. These practitioners then attended a series of workshops designed to facilitate the process of identifying and refining potential patterns evident in that practice. The case studies and emerging patterns were captured, stored and edited through a community wiki-based platform, which provides templates to guide practitioners, together with shared editing and commenting facilities. The quality of the emerging patterns was maintained by moderation and review by the project team. Once a body of patterns was available they were categorised against a representation of the learning design process, again by groups of practitioners. This led to the creation of a number of organising structures that are closely allied to the needs of practitioners. In addition, cases, patterns and scenarios are tagged using a structured tagging framework.
The final Planet methodology that has emerged through this process has four key stages: sharing and exploring case stories from practice; eliciting and elaborating candidate patterns by examining commonalities across the case stories; mapping the relationship between patterns and learning design processes; and applying patterns to new problem scenarios. Each of these is supported by a set of facilitation activities that can be applied in a workshop setting. The Planet methodology is expressed as a set of patterns. The Planet process has been very successful in enabling practitioners to share practice effectively. Feedback has been overwhelmingly positive about the workshops and activities in this regard.
However it is also clear from the evaluation that the workshop-based elicitation process has been more important than the pattern products for practitioners. This is perhaps inevitable in a relatively short project: the interactive and iterative nature of our activity meant that, although there are many case stories and candidate patterns under development, there are still relatively few fully developed patterns. The process of editing, reviewing and expanding patterns is continuing, as part of the sustainable plan for the project, and through interaction with other funded projects, for example, CETL ALiC (CETL ALiC, 2005-2010) and the NTFS project, Share (Share Project, 2008-2011), led by University of Kent.
Findings from the project show that many potential patterns arising from web 2.0 examples of practice are actually more generally applicable, for example to other areas of communication and collaboration in assessment, learning and teaching. The organising frameworks for patterns are also able to accommodate existing pedagogical pattern collections, such as those arising from the Pedagogical Patterns Project (Pedagogical Patterns Project), allowing for the possibility of a much broader scoped integrated pedagogical patterns resource. Additionally the outcome of other JISC Users and Innovation projects could undergo a shortened version of the pattern identification process and be represented as part of the pattern framework. An example would be the AWESOME project, where their good practices for extended student essay and dissertation work could be moderated against the criteria for identifying patterns and, where appropriate, represented as patterns. Similarly there is evidence that the process of facilitated sharing of stories of practice is beneficial in itself and could be adapted for use in other areas where reflection on practice is required.