Learning Patterns

Learning Types and Learning Patterns are built to work together. Types define the experience and Patterns prompt the how. Once you know the type of experience you’re after, Patterns gives you a library of ways to build it – reusable, technology-neutral activity structures, each tagged to the Learning Type it serves.

Learning patterns are reusable scaffolds that aid the design of learning experiences. They all align to a specific type of learning and provide a superstructure or way of thinking that can be reused and recombined to suit different contexts and topics. They are both technology and delivery agnostic – meaning the same learning patterns can be used in the classroom or online.

Before picking an activity, decide what kind of learning you actually want to happen – are learners meant to assimilate information, investigate for themselves, discuss and compare views, try something and get it wrong, produce something, get evaluated, or learn from others? Once you have chosen the type of learning you need you can then browse the Pattern Library to locate suitable patterns you can adopt. These learning patterns match the typical kinds of activities and structures you would find in a standard lesson.

The aim of learning patterns is to use them to construct a lesson like they are building blocks. And a lesson might be a block of time in a classroom, or a page in the learning management system, a synchronous online session, a chapter, a video - almost anything is possible! Most patterns are small units of time, made to be pieced together and used in conjunction with one another. The colour coding also allows you to see how different learning types are being utilised. The more learning types that are engaged, the more surface area you create for learning to occur.