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the new pattern template is here!

Over the last few weeks, we’ve been busy with workshops all over the place: CETL ALiC in leeds, formative e-Assessment in London, Teaching and Learning Computer Science in Edinbrugh. Of these, the first two were planned as a Workshop II in the frame of our methodology. The London one pretty much followed the plan, while [...]

Try once, refine once: a handy pattern from Aliy Fowler

Aliy Fowler from Kent is one of the participants in our formative e-Assessment group. She brought us a case story called String comparison in language learning. At the 2nd workshop of this group, we discussed this case, and identified a pattern, which she called Try Once, Refine Once. Aliy and her table posted the first [...]

CETL ALiC meets Planet

On Tuesday John and I facilitated a second Planet workshop for the CETL ALiC (Active Learning in Computing) fellows - the intention being to help them identify patterns that are shareable from the wealth of material and experience they have been gathering over the past three years. Dissemination is vital to ALiC and the project [...]

Planet’s journey to the north

On Nov. 13th we’ll be holding a workshop at Heriot-Watt University, Edinburgh, on Teaching and Learning Computer Science. Contact Judy Robertson if you want to come along (or drop me a line).       

Finalising a pattern structure

We have had many discussions about the structure we need for a pattern and the template on the wiki has been updated to reflect some of these. However I don’t think we have agreed a structure that we can work with from now on. My own view is that the current structure is incomplete and [...]

From stories to patterns, and back, and back again

Let’s say you know how to write a case story, and we’ve convinced you that stories are not enough. But how do you get from a story to a pattern? Well, hopefully by March we’ll have something of an answer to that. In the meanwhile, here’s a tutorial that just might help:        [...]

e-Framework Workshop - Weds 29th October 2008.

Went to the e-framework workshop yesterday and in retrospect I feel it was useful in that it helped me make more sense of what is expected from project teams’ contributions to the e-framework.  The workshop introduced ‘Programme X’ which is concerned with something called the ‘JISC Innovation Base’ and the ‘national’ e-framework. We were introduced [...]

Planet 2-day meeting

My head is buzzing following our very productive two day meeting in London which finished yesterday. The first day was a meeting of the Planet team; on the second we were joined by distinguished guests with expertise in various areas of patterns and representations of practice. These included: Lorna Burns from Barnet College; Mark Childs [...]

Christian Kohls mines for patterns in London (Oct. 28th, 5pm)

(cross-posted from designforlearning) A bit of a short notice, I know. But if you happen to be in town, come to Christian Kohl’s talk at the Knowledge lab: Getting to sound educational settings, successful teaching methods and beneficial instructional tools and materials is a challenging design task. To not reinvent the wheel and learn by good practices [...]

“language” attribute on patterns?

Our cases have a “group / workshop” attribute. This is because we collect them from various communities, and the participants in these communities want to quickly find their peer’s contributions. We didn’t have a similar attribute for patterns, thinking that the whole point of patterns is to promote generality and knowledge transfer. Now, that is [...]

Studies or stories?

One of the issues that came up at the recent formative e-assessment workshops was the disparate interpretations of Case Study. This led to the production of our tutorial. But it also got me thinking, maybe we can do better by a change of name. If we talk of “case stories” or “case narratives”, would that [...]

Planet: bringing learning design knowledge to the forefront

Here’s my slidedeck for tomorrow’s presentation at handheldlearning:       

An inconvenient thesis?

Christine Elizabeth Wania’s phd thesis questions the empirical evidence for the benefits of pattern languages in HCI: For more than two decades much of the pattern language literature, within the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), has focused on the possible benefits pattern languages may provide, but there has been very little empirical work to support [...]

Eureka!, again

On Thursday we had the 2nd practical inquiry day of the formative e-assessment group. The focus of this day was collecting case stories and identifying seed patterns (aka proto-patterns). To get people in the right mood, we started with the Eureka! game, which we first tried in Singapore. You have to try it - it’s such [...]

Cloudworks, pattern aggregators, and some news from the Planet platform

Last week Jim, Steve and myself were invited to a Cloudfest with the Cloudworks team. A lot of interesting stuff came up (see George’s post). Among them, the question of sharing design objects (patterns, resources, etc.) across sites and the visual aspects of design objects. This resonated well with some the conversations we’ve been having [...]

How to write a case study

When we engage with practitioners, the first thing we ask them is for a case study. That seems to be an overloaded, somewhat obscure creature. We think we know exactly what it means, or at least what we’re looking for, but it turns out that the term is so widely used in so many ways, [...]

Thoughts on future progress

On Monday we have a Planet Eluminate meeting. Unfortunately I’ll be in a car somewhere between Calais and Strasbourg and so even in this connected world will struggle to take part….  So if any of the team pick this up before the meeting - here are my thoughts on future priorities and where we need [...]

Pattern Formats and Structures

I want to try to summarise some of the discussion that we have had about pattern formats and structures, so that we can make the necessary decisions to take us forward.

1. There is agreement that “Illustration” should be added as a standard field and that we should encourage use of visual representations, such as diagrams, more generally.
2. There seems to be a consensus that “Aim” should be changed to “Problem”. Because of some restrictive connotations of using this term which have been mentioned, we should provide supporting text and examples to indicate that this is meant in the sense of what issue the pattern resolves.
3. The question of the confidence rating for patterns has been raised. The view that this should reflect the level of confidence in the pattern as a pattern, and not just its level of development, seems to be generally agreed. Some further discussion is required to determine how this could be reflected in the form of usable guidelines.
4. There has been discussion about a range of detailed additional information in different categories which relate to the main parts of the pattern (Problem, Solution, Context), or to the pattern as a whole. Suggestions include subsections for rationale and evidence. The experience of the formats used by other pattern repositories will be useful to us, to help decide on a compromise between the requirements of precision and standardisation to aid pattern interchange, and flexibility and simplicity for users of the pattern network. A draft structure is available on the Planet Wiki, and can be the basis of further discussion. My general preference is for fairly broad categories, with a number of more detailed optional subcategories prompted by a set of guidelines and suggested questions, with examples to indicate how these can be applied.
5. How we deal with the formative stages of a pattern has been discussed. This is a pressing issue as it affects how people use the Planet platform, and any changes agreed need to be implemented soon as it would be difficult to change things retrospectively. There appears to be a consensus that the seed/proto patterns are not patterns, and thus must be distinguished from patterns – even ones categorised as having a low level of confidence attached to them – in some way. How this is then reflected in the pattern and platform structure still needs to be resolved. These are some of my thoughts on this. I will use the word “proto-pattern” for convenience, but what term we actually use needs to be agreed on.

The processes associated with creating a pattern, as against refining and seeking to increase the level of confidence in it, are obviously linked. However, especially when considering the initial stages of pattern creation, there are also significant differences. A simple way of looking at this question is to consider the components that make up a pattern, which we are currently discussing with regard to specifying the pattern format. In defining the problem, we need to understand what the forces are that need to be resolved. The solution both needs sufficient evidence from actual cases (a minimum of 3 according to the rule of thumb we have agreed on), as well as an understanding of what other patterns would be needed to provide a complete solution. The context specifies the conditions under which the pattern applies, but also connects it to other patterns at its own and higher levels. Therefore, even before we can even consider something to be a pattern, we have to look for other relevant cases and practice, look at the practice and theory of associated problem areas, and relate the prospective pattern to a wider conceptual framework. The questions raised and activities required at this stage thus will centre on resolving these issues. Of course these processes are also relevant when we reach the pattern stage, but while the processes associated with a pattern are primarily focused on its use to solve a particular problem, for a proto-pattern it is primarily focused on the formulation and development of the pattern and pattern language.

The distinction between proto-patterns and patterns should not be seen as a formal or linguistic one. Rather it reflects their different roles. Indeed, for a considerable part of the period of development of a proto-pattern, it may be uncertain whether it will progress to pattern status or not. It is potentially confusing to people using the Planet site, who may expect more from what are labelled as patterns, unless this distinction is made clear. At the same time, having a means of representing and developing even very rudimentary proto-pattern ideas is vital. Clarifying how we do this will be particularly important at the current juncture, where we are beginning to discuss with others how we interface with systems that may be the source of such ideas.

How would this affect our current framework? Obviously we should have some guidelines that explain the distinctions, but reflecting this in our systems and pattern formats requires careful thought. In practice, although we need to draw the distinction between proto-patterns and patterns, we also want to create a smooth transition between the two. If feasible, I would prefer a common format, with an interface that was effectively context sensitive, and presented different options and questions depending on the proto-pattern/pattern status indication. As an example, for a particular part of a proto-pattern, questions may prompt the user to look for examples where a proposed solution does not apply, to help establish the boundaries of context for the pattern. In the case of the pattern itself, this part would state what these boundaries were, and indicate relevant related patterns. There would need to be a process, perhaps using a simple checklist, that facilitated the transition from proto-pattern to pattern. Underlying this would be the simple criterion for deciding whether something should be given pattern status – namely: “Can it be used as a pattern?” Opinions on this issue would be particularly valuable, as we need to move to a decision very soon.

      

Organising structures

One of our aims in the Planet project is to explore possible organising structures for our learning patterns - the “language” bit of what we are talking about. This is probably the most elusive element of the pattern approach - there are many individual patterns and there are pattern collections, but genuine pattern languages are [...]

e-learning patterns: workshop at KMRC, Tuebingen, March 4-6

Once you start its hard to stop, but really I should. After all, this is the Planet project site - not the pattern herald. Still, this workshop is organized by Christian, so it has to be worth the trip. Plus, you can catch a gig at Tuebingen’s epplehaus. Design patterns capture proven solutions for recurrent problems. The goal is [...]

us @ handheldlearning

Our paper “Planet: bringing learning design knowledge to the forefront” has been accepted to handheldlearning2008 (London, oct 13-15). Looks like its going to be a fun conference. If you’re there, come and say hi. Here’s the abstract we sent: 15 years ago, few learners had either mobile telephony or internet access as a reliable learning resource. [...]

Call for papers: Pragmatic and systematic approaches in applying patterns

Browsing through some old notes from EuroPLoP, I found this: Call for papers: Special Issue of Springer Transactions on Pattern Languages of Programming (TPLOP) “Pragmatic and systematic approaches in applying patterns” Even though patterns are a software engineering success story and have become mainstream in recent years, the application of the different types of patterns in practice [...]

yongfook made me friendfeed

Here’s what I learnt from this presentation: Blogs are not what they used to be (ok, I knew that, but he has nice graphs). Lifestreams are the new blogs (ok, I knew that too, but he has some nice links and examples). When you post on slideshare, have a good joke on slide 1. [...]

Reviewing our workshop process

It was particularly interesting reading the blog posting from one of the participants at the Singapore workshop on August 8th. Our own discussions have highlighted the fact that face to face workshops are the most successful way we have found to support the process of identifying patterns and anything we can do to enhance this [...]

“Eureka!” Sketching excersise

One of the nice things that happened at the Singapore workshop was the introduction game we played. Every one of us has these Eureka! moments; personal experiences were we learned something in a way that was etched into our memory. Positive, formative events of learning, the kind we wish to engender in the environments and activities [...]