Pedagogical Patterns, Scripts, and Learnflows - different facets of the same concept
or a zoo of educational methods?

Andreas Harrer
Katholische Universität Eichstätt-Ingolstadt

Currently the field of technology-enhanced learning provides a wide variety of terms and research strands for the description of learning/teaching processes: pedagogical design patterns, learning scripts (esp. collaboration scripts), learning designs, educational models, and learnflows are just a few of the vocabulary used nowadays by researchers and practitioners. Usually all these different strands have their own history and background (e.g. schema theory, instructional design, patterns) and specific methods associated to them (e.g. the "rule of 3" successful applications of a design in the area of patterns vs. the empirically proven significance of improved learning outcomes in the scripting tradition).
Yet, there is the striking fact that all these strands share the goal of supporting the learners and teachers in educational settings by means of structuring the activities: sequencing of activities, providing specific tools for phases, and setting up collaborative situations are elements of all of these research lines. Our contribution will explore the "multiverse" of different terminology, background, and practices associated with each strand and try to generalize where appropriate and to stress differences that exist between the approaches. Since our background is computer science, we will also stress the aspect of notation and representation of the approaches which is directly connected to the implementability in computer-supported scenarios and systems. In this aspect it is even desirable to expand the view further and reflect on established methods in the area of workflow or business process modelling that shares a lot of issues with its educational counterpart.

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