About Pattern Learning
Higher education has spent decades refining pedagogy and how we teach. Pattern Learning starts from a different question: how do we learn, and how do we design for that experience to be better?
There’s a depth of information about teaching, but not even a shared vocabulary to talk about learning. Pattern Learning grew out of two resources built to close that gap:
- Learning Types draws on Diana Laurillard’s conversational framework and schema theory: the idea that learning happens when we take new information and connect it to what we already know. From that, seven learning types describe the different ways people make those connections – assimilative, investigative, discursive, formative, productive, evaluative and social.
- Learning Patterns borrows the idea of a pattern language from architect Christopher Alexander, who used it to help his clients define the features of a space in their own words. Applied to learning design, each pattern is a reusable, technology-agnostic solution to a recurring design problem, aligned to a specific Learning Type.
These two ideas have shaped how Pattern Learning works and underpin every practice and tool built for learning design. Pattern Learning brings these ideas together with design practice, to help organisations create and develop richer, more effective learning experiences for staff, students and organisations. This design approach is now tried-and-tested across hundreds of courses.
About Tim
I’m Tim Klapdor. I’ve spent close to two decades working on learning design and educational technology in higher education. I built out the University of Adelaide’s fully online program portfolio and lead learning design and course development projects. At Charles Sturt University’s uImagine innovation lab, I worked across significant projects aimed at improving online learning and the learner experience.
Get in touch: tim@patternlearning.co