The document discusses pedagogical patterns, which are teaching strategies and best practices that are shared among educators. It describes the Pedagogical Pattern Project started in 1996 to observe, classify, and document effective teaching strategies for computer science courses. Patterns are described using a template including their name, description, context, solution, and related patterns. Examples provided are the "Early Bird" pattern of teaching important concepts early and often, and the "Toolbox" pattern. The repository of pedagogical patterns continues to be available online for educators to browse, assess in different subjects, and use the idea of collecting best practices in their teaching and research.

1. Pedagogical patterns
Andrea Valente
www.create.aau.dk/av

2. Education
• How can we university professors… ?
– support each other
• improve/simplify teaching
• share best practice
• re-use what works but retain ownership professional
pride
– use it:
• feel free to experiment with the teaching
• then reflect and research on what happened

3. Enter: PPP
• Pedagogical Pattern Project (1996)
http://www.pedagogicalpatterns.org/
• Approach and initial results:
– observe and classify strategies for Computer Science courses
– found 14 “pedagogical patterns” (as in Christopher Alexander’s Pattern
Language [1])
– patterns are described individually, then relations are found
• a template for description:
NAME, THUMBNAIL, AUDIENCE/CONTEXT, FORCES, SOLUTION,
DISCUSSION/ CONSEQUENCES/IMPLEMENTATION, SPECIAL RESOURCES,
RELATED PATTERNS

4. Examples
• Early Bird http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/PedPat1.2.html#earlybird
– THUMBNAIL: Teach the most important material, the "big ideas," first (and
often)
– FORCES: Students need to see where they are headed. They need to see that
detail presented early in the course will relate to important ideas.
– SOLUTION: A course is mined for its most important ideas. … The ideas, and
especially their relationships are introduced at the beginning of the course
and are returned to repeatedly throughout the course. … order class topics in
order of importance and find ways to teach the most important ideas early.
– SPECIAL RESOURCES: Time and deep thought are clearly required.
• Tool Box http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/PedPat1.3.html#toolbox
• Mistake http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/PedPat1.3.html#mistake

5. State of the PPP now
• Online repository:
http://193.61.44.29:42042/ODC.html
• What is it? The Pedagogical Patterns Collector suite of tools enables
teachers to share their good teaching ideas.
Demo: try to…
use the "browser" mode,
for example check "understanding authentic practice" which could be
relevant for desing-related subjects

6. Benefit
• in teaching
– assess how good patterns work in different subjects
• in research
– the idea of collecting, classifying and make available best
practices is very good -> it can be used as a method

7. Bib
• [1] A pattern language http://www.patternlanguage.com/labyrinth/apltour1.html
• [2] Collections of Pedagogical Design Patterns http://www.ldgrid.org/resources/representations-and-languages/designpatterns/patterncollections
• [3] Fourteen Pedagogical Patterns
http://csis.pace.edu/~bergin/PedPat1.3.html
• [4] Pedagogical Pattern Collector http://193.61.44.29:42042/ODC.html