A Critical Perspective on Design Patterns for E-Learning

Abstract

“A design 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” (Alexander et al., 1977). In the field of e-learning, design patterns are frequently advocated as a powerful way of providing structured, teacher-friendly, textual representations of learning designs, or of expressing the design rationale underlying learning objects. The purpose of this chapter is to look at e-learning design patterns from a critical perspective. We provide a historical, multidisciplinary excursus of the notion of design patterns. We propose a taxonomy of e-learning design patterns, providing examples in the various categories. Finally, we discuss both the benefits of design patterns for e-learning professionals (particularly, novice ones) and their drawbacks, and investigate how such pros and cons may affect the role of patterns for learning designs.