A pedagogical design pattern framework for sharing experiences and enhancing communities of practice within online and blended learning

Abstract

”Design patterns” were originally proposed in architecture and later in software engineering as a methodology to sketch and share solutions to recurring design problems. In recent years ”pedagogical design patterns” have been introduced as a way to sketch and share good practices in teaching and learning; specifically in the context of technology-enhanced learning (e-learning). Several attempts have been made to establish a framework for describing and sharing such e-learning patterns, but so far they have had limited success. At a series of workshops in a competence-development project for teachers at the University of Copenhagen a new and simpler pedagogical design pattern framework was developed for interfaculty sharing of experiences and enhancing communities of practice in relation to online and blended learning across the university. In this study, the new pedagogical design pattern framework is applied to describe the learning design in four online and blended learning courses within different academic disciplines: Classical Greek, Biostatistics, Environmental Management in Europe, and Climate Change Impacts, Adaptation and Mitigation. Future perspectives for using the framework for developing new E-learning patterns for online and blended learning courses are discussed.