THEORETICAL APPROACH TO DISTILLATION OF PEDAGOGICAL PATTERNS FROM PRACTICE TO ENABLE TRANSFER AND REUSE OF GOOD TEACHING

The promise of the learning design pattern approach to resolve the problem of adequate support to practitioners has not materialised. Our contention is that this is due to the lack of a pedagogically grounded model of approach. We made use of the Conversational Framework (Laurillard, 2002) to guide us in analytical scoping of the problem space and to enable strong focus on the pedagogical properties of a learning design. Our assumption is that successful support for the learning design process can only be erected on top of the model that gives prominence to critical pedagogical properties of the Learning Design. To this end, the work we are engaged with, has two aims: i) understanding the critical factors in what makes good Teaching and Learning Activity design, so that it can be foregrounded in the representational format, and, ii) arriving at a computational model for representing the pedagogy inside the learning design. Our approach is introduced by positioning it in relation to similar work so far, most notably the work on learning design patterns. The paper begins with a critique of the current approach to the design pattern paradigm in the field of learning technology. Our methodological approach is explained and a prototype pedagogical pattern representation based on the Conversational Framework is presented, to illustrate how this might work in practice.