Pedagogical Patterns: their Place in the Genre Sally Fincher & Ian Utting ITiCSE 2002 Aarhus, Denmark June 2002

2 What are patterns? A way of capturing good design practice A way of developing a common design vocabulary Structured around problems designers face “Each pattern describes a problem which occurs over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that problem, in such a way that you can use this solution a million times over, without ever doing it the same way twice” Not created or invented, but harvested A pattern language is composed of patterns in relationship to each other

3 What is the scope of the genre? A Pattern Language Christopher Alexander et al 1977 Design Patterns: Elements of Reusable Object- Oriented Software Eric Gamma et al 1994 Patterns for HCI Erickson et al 1997 Pedagogical Patterns Project: Successes in Teaching Object Technology 1998 DIAC ’02: Shaping the Network Society: patterns for participation, action and change

4 What does a Pattern Language need? Functional Requirements Presentational Form Capture of Practice Abstraction Value System Structuring Principle Non-functional Requirements Communicative Power Non-obvious Insight Generative

6 What does a Pattern Language need? Functional Requirements Presentational Form Capture of Practice Abstraction Value System Structuring Principle Non-functional Requirements Communicative Power Non-obvious Insight Generative

7 From Here to Eternity Self Home Town Work Land Love Travel War Belief Space

8 How is a Pattern Language created? Small group of like-minded people (effort & will) Conscious effort over time (forging shared – if not “agreed” – value system) Considerable domain expertise (experience, empirical, studies, theoretical & bibliographic knowledge etc.)