I had a meeting with Tony Linde (U&I Semantic Web) and Vania Dimitrova / Lydia Lau (AWESOME project - Leeds Uni) today where Tony looked at how the semantic web might be applied to JISC projects. With regard to Planet Tony suggested that there were opportunities to apply semantic Web approaches, particularly when we seek to make use of patterns in our pattern store and represent them to users who seek solutions /make decisions about various aspects of designing and delivering learning experiences. I think we should follow this up at the face to face meeting on Dec 15th.
One other outcome of this meeting relates to the AWESOME project and the fact that they have collected together a series of examples from both staff and students of things that worked across the various phases of writing a dissertation. Thisseems to present an opportunity to capture both a collection of case studies and abstract potential patterns for use within Planet. I suggest that we agree a way forward with AWESOME on how to achieve this.
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 in Leeds, as Janet reported, was more of a “I.IV”. Perhaps we were more aggressive in London.
In Edinburgh (Heriot-Watt, to be percise) on the other hand, we managed to discuss case stories and derive two patterns in a single day. It might be down to having a longer workshop, or to the fact that computer scientists are more comfortable with the whole design pattern concept.
Includes slots for icon, illustration and diagram.
Added a confidence value (0-3) dropdown.
Details (authors, dates, etc) hidden and shown on request.
Added a support section
The last bit is perhaps the most significant change. The support section aims to scaffold pattern authors through establishing scientific validity. It includes four elements:
Source - the case story from which this pattern originated.
Triangulation - additional supporting case stories (remember the rule of three)
Rationale - theoretical backing
Verification - solutions implemented using this pattern
This still doesn’t reflect the pattern scheme in full glory, but “you might find, you get what you need”.
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 version of this pattern, and we’ve been iterating on it for the last couple of weeks.
This pattern is far from complete. The discussions around it are still hot, and you’re welcome to pitch in. But even in its current form, it is worth a read. This pattern uses a clever grading scheme to promote students to make a serious effort to get the answer right, and then make good use of the feedback they receive.
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 is keen to develop a pattern collection to represent the findings of the project.
The Planet team have agreed on a three workshop model for supporting pattern collection. Workshop one will look at cases (stories) and seek to draw out the key elements: the challenge faced, the success factors, the solution. Workshop two will take protopatterns developed by the facilitators and review and revise them into (hopefully) more complete patterns. Workshop three will focus on use and will attempt to address challenges brought by contributors using the patterns through the organising structure.
We held a workshop one for ALiC earlier in the year. This first workshop considered case studies and led to a much richer understanding of the actual activities. However the cases proposed were very detailed and covered an entire workpackage, making it difficult to identify successful practice. In this workshop we therefore asked the ALiC team to identify specific incidents of successful practice within their cases, which were then discussed and mapped onto a pattern template. It is therefore probably best thought of as a “workshop one and three quarters” - beyond a “workshop one” but not quite into the full extent of a workshop two. Each group identified several protopatterns and started to flesh out the detail. John and I will now develop these further, looking for connections with existing patterns and other evidence, in preparation for our next workshop - a full workshop two - in December.
For me one of the most useful outcomes of this workshop was the feedback on the template which we used to scaffold the pattern elicitation. This was based on the proposed pattern form and included all elements together with some explanation of what was needed for each. Two observations were made. Firstly, although all the pattern elements were included, we only ever used a subset in the discussion and in a particular order: problem, solution, context, then name and diagram in either order, then evidence. None of the other sections were useful in the discussion. Secondly, the use of the “P” word in the explanations was unhelpful - the ALiC team were focusing on their case stories - they didn’t have a pattern yet - so they suggested rephrasing to focus on the story.
So the good news is the scaffolding worked really well - I will revise it in line with the observations made above and will make it available on the wiki for others to use.
Looking forward to the next workshop with this group!
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 does not give enough support to people moving from protopatterns to patterns. It would also be useful to use a structure which is compatible with other collections to allow more seamless reuse of the patterns of others.
I proposed some changes some time ago based on the PLML pattern elements - the resulting discussion was then summarised by Jim. I’d like to take that further now and propose an actual specification for the structure. I believe our template should include the following elements (comments in parentheses):
Name (short, memorable but not so gimicky as to be meaningless to anyone outside the initial discussion)
Illustration (a picture showing an instantiation of the pattern in real life - so a photo, screenshot, video - rather than a diagrammatic representation)
Problem (the design challenge the pattern will address)
Context (described by PLML as “applicability” - what kind of situation does this pattern apply to?)
Solution (the instruction that resolves or addresses the challenge expressed in the problem)
Diagram (a schematic or diagramatic representation that captures the essence of what the pattern is about - could be a sketch or a more formal representation)
Evidence - to include 3 sections (either formally or indicated in the section “advice”):
Examples (cases where this pattern is seen)
Rationale (principles, evidence from literature etc to back up pattern
Links and references (supporting the above)
Related patterns (patterns within the language - or another) that this one extends, is part of, contains, is the same as etc)
Confidence (how sure are we this is a pattern - may be related to the level of evidence, the rule of three etc. - suggest a three level “star” rating).
Author
Licensing (as now)
I think this is in keeping with our previous discussions but that of course is open to disagreement! Some of these may end up being collapsed into one field; others may be optional. However, given the difficulties users have had in knowing how to move from case to pattern, overspecifying the structure seems appropriate to begin with.
Our plan is to use this format for the ALiC workshop this week and work on scaffolding questions and activities to help our participants map their cases onto it. We’ll keep you posted.
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:
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 to the JISC Innovation Base; it would be helpful if the purpose of this database was clearly stated - my take is that JISC are trying to create a search-able database containing descriptions of key aspects of each project together with clear statements of their outputs. These outputs will include references to entries in the e-framework and hence make it easier for other people to find and use these outputs. People at the workshop were used as guinea pigs to test the process of identifying essential elements of their respective projects and model them. There are emerging tools and templates to support the IB however they are not widely released as yet.
With regard to the e-framework my understanding is that identified services arising from projects need to be expressed as service usage models; such services may be software tools, processes, activities etc. The workshop included an introduction on how to bridge from a project’s entry in the IB onto entries in the national e-framework as SUMs.
Together with a colleague I was able to create an entry for the Streamline project for the IB, to specify elements of the bridge and to create a tentative SUM for one of the services arising from the project. This was relatively straight forward as the service was a software tool; I think matters may be more difficult if the service is a process (such as some of the outputs from PLanet).
It is unclear exactly what is expected from current Projects with regard to contributions to either the IB of the e-framework; clearly attendance at this event and being guinea pigs in the process are evident contributions to the ‘e’framework’. I’ve emailed Lawrie seeking clrification on this point.
George Roberts said that he would collect slides from the event and make them available via the EMERGE website - not yet present at the time of this post.
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 from Coventry; Juliette Culver from the OU; Sally Fincher from University of Kent; Christian Kohls from the Knowledge Media Research Center in Tübingen, Germany; Diana Laurillard from London Knowledge Lab; Helen Sharp from the OU; and Niall Winters from London Knowledge Lab. Jill Jameson also joined us for the afternoon on the second day in her role as critical friend to the project. In between the two working days, the team and guests met for dinner at the wonderful Ottolenghi restaurant in Islington - well worth a visit! But back to the main business.
Frankly it is difficult to know where to start. On day one we thrashed through some major issues to do with the process of eliciting patterns, the scaffolding we offer through our wiki, and the need for (and current lack of) an organising structure for the patterns that are emerging from our workshop activities. On the second day we had invited our guests to submit stories about their own successful teaching practice which we then used in the morning to give them a taste of our workshop approach to pattern elicitation. In the afternoon we invited them to feedback on this which led to a valuable discussion of the strengths and weaknesses in our approach and alternative approaches which really helped us to pin down the aspects we need to focus on in the remaining months of the project.
Each of these needs further consideration (and warrants its own blog post) but to summarize:
We are proposing a three workshop model, with active facilitation from a pattern-knowledgeable moderator pre and post each activity. Much of this is in place but needs closer specification so that what is currently “craft” knowledge is made explicit, the activities required of participants are more clearly defined and the case and pattern structures currently on the Wiki reflect what we are seeking in these two forms.
We need to agree what and how we are abstracting from case stories to make patterns: what are the salient questions to ask? And what order is it appropriate to ask them?
We urgently need an organising structure to help us make sense of the patterns that are already emerging, to identify gaps where new patterns are needed, and to scaffold the use of patterns in practice. We have some candidates and we need to start working with them: how do our existing patterns map onto these? where are the gaps? what sense do they make to users? The latter is key: whatever structure we choose must reflect the way teaching practitioners work and think about their practice or the patterns will not be used.
We currently have upwards of a dozen user groups, with whom we are working and talking. All are at different stages in the process, but it is important that one or two at least complete and evaluate the whole three workshop cycle. CETL ALiC and the e-formative assessment groups are furthest along this path so we need to make sure their forthcoming workshops reflect the process as it is developing.
There is much more to say and other team members will give their own reflections on the event. But for me this has been a significant activity and one which has really enabled us to examine what we are doing. There is a lot still to do but we are definitely making progress! The challenge now is to keep focused on these critical elements of work.
(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 that have proven in the past, patterns are a promising approach to capture the knowledge of experts. Design patterns describe the essential elements of solutions for recurrent problems and reason about context, applicability, benefits and liabilities. In this presentation, patterns of interactive information graphics will be demonstrated to show how various visual interaction forms can help or fail to serve in an instructional context. Based on these and other pedagogical patterns some fundamental concepts of patterns will be illustrated.
Starting with an elaboration of common practices of the pattern community to find, write and reflect about patterns, a model of pattern acquisition will be developed. This model is based on schema theory and leads to a discussion about the reliability and usability of patterns. The striking question is whether the documented patterns, the patterns in our mind and the patterns in the world are the same.
About the speaker
Christian Kohls is a Member of the research unit “Design and Implementation of Integrative Learning Environments”. He has been working at the Knowledge Media Research Center since 2005. His job is the technical development of the German information and qualification portal e-teaching.org. He is also responsible for editoring the content section “media technology” and gives frequently online trainings in e-learning software. After his studies of media and computer science he worked in the e-learning team of the University of Applied Sciences Wedel/Hamburg. He worked as consultant at pharus53 software solutions and implemented multilingual wbt solutions and software tutorials. He is inventor and development coordinator of moowinx, an end user tool to create interactive graphics.
