What are pedagogical patterns, how they could be used in teaching and research.

1. Pedagogical patterns
Andrea Valente
www.create.aau.dk/av

2. Education
• How can we university professors… ?
– support each other
• improve/simplify teaching
• share best practice
• re-use what works but retain ownership professional
pride
– use it:
• feel free to experiment with the teaching
• then reflect and research on what happened

3. Enter: PPP
• Pedagogical Pattern Project (1996)
http://www.pedagogicalpatterns.org/
• Approach and initial results:
– observe and classify strategies for Computer Science courses
– found 14 “pedagogical patterns” (as in Christopher Alexander’s Pattern
Language [1])
– patterns are described individually, then relations are found
• a template for description:
NAME, THUMBNAIL, AUDIENCE/CONTEXT, FORCES, SOLUTION,
DISCUSSION/ CONSEQUENCES/IMPLEMENTATION, SPECIAL RESOURCES,
RELATED PATTERNS

4. Examples
• Early Bird http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/PedPat1.2.html#earlybird
– THUMBNAIL: Teach the most important material, the "big ideas," first (and
often)
– FORCES: Students need to see where they are headed. They need to see that
detail presented early in the course will relate to important ideas.
– SOLUTION: A course is mined for its most important ideas. … The ideas, and
especially their relationships are introduced at the beginning of the course
and are returned to repeatedly throughout the course. … order class topics in
order of importance and find ways to teach the most important ideas early.
– SPECIAL RESOURCES: Time and deep thought are clearly required.
• Tool Box http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/PedPat1.3.html#toolbox
• Mistake http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/PedPat1.3.html#mistake

5. State of the PPP now
• Online repository:
http://193.61.44.29:42042/ODC.html
• What is it? The Pedagogical Patterns Collector suite of tools enables
teachers to share their good teaching ideas.
Demo: try to…
use the "browser" mode,
for example check "understanding authentic practice" which could be
relevant for desing-related subjects

6. Benefit
• in teaching
– assess how good patterns work in different subjects
• in research
– the idea of collecting, classifying and make available best
practices is very good -> it can be used as a method

7. Bib
• [1] A pattern language http://www.patternlanguage.com/labyrinth/apltour1.html
• [2] Collections of Pedagogical Design Patterns http://www.ldgrid.org/resources/representations-and-languages/designpatterns/patterncollections
• [3] Fourteen Pedagogical Patterns
http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/PedPat1.3.html
• [4] Pedagogical Pattern Collector http://193.61.44.29:42042/ODC.html