JISC

Start date: 1 January 2008

End date: 31 March 2009

Funding programme: Users & Innovation: Personalising Technologies

Project website: http://www.patternLanguagenetwork.org

JISC theme(s): Information environment, e-Research

Committees: JISC Integrated Information Environment committee

Overview

Overview

As practitioners start to explore the use of Web 2.0 technologies in their assessment, learning and teaching (ALT) practice, it is critical that successful examples can be identified and shared to enable efficient and effective reuse in different contexts and to avoid reinventing the wheel. Such transfer of practice requires an effective representation that is intuitive to understand and use, strongly rooted in examples of successful practice and that makes explicit the aspects of the practice that have contributed to its success. The pattern language approach (Alexander et. al, 1977) offers such a representation but to date has not been widely adopted by educational practitioners.

Aims and objectives

Planet aims to:

• develop a pattern language for the domain of learning through Web 2.0 technologies
• develop a collaborative software platform to facilitate community based pattern creation and use, together with supporting methodologies for these activities
• support and engage a community of practice to sustain the pattern activity in the longer term
• to evaluate the pattern language approach particularly with regard to its impact on the development of learning experiences
• contribute to the e-framework semantic wiki
• disseminate successful practice in Web 2.0

Project methodology

Prof. Finlay, supported by Jim Hensman and Steve Warburton, will be working with the user communities to analyse existing practice, identify patterns and generally encourage the user communities of practice.

Jim Hensman will play a key role in development of a pattern language to support community based pattern creation. This will feed into the development of a software platform to support the pattern language.

Yishay Mor is largely involved with the design, development, creation and documentation of the pattern language software platform

Isobel Falconer is primarily concerned with the evaluation of the pattern identification process, the usefulness and usability of resulting patterns, the effectiveness of the pattern language and the usability of the software platform (supported by Yishay Mor)

Steven Warburton will support the user community engagement activities, support the evaluation process and contribute to the e-framework outputs.

John Gray is the project manager and he will complete the project documentation, submit key reports, administer the budget, monitor project developments and ensure outcomes are made public.

Anticipated outputs and outcomes

Tangible project deliverables include:

• A pattern language for the domain of learning through web 2.0 technologies
• A collaborative software platform for community based pattern creation
• Supporting methodologies for creating community based patterns.
• Documentation and tutorials to allow use of the software by third parties
• Evaluation instrument for evaluation of impact on teaching practice
• Three workshops for the community to engage in pattern identification, refinement and adaptation
• Knowledge and experience of using UIDM
• Understanding of the process of pattern capture
• Reports for JISC (2 per year + final report)
• Website with project information and deliverables
• JISC Emerge community and blog

Technology / Standards used

Lead Institution

• Leeds Metropolitan University

Project partners

• Coventry University
• London Knowledge Lab
• Glasgow Caledonian University
• Kings College London