Open Pattern Tool for Higher Education Research and Practice (OPTion)
[The infrastructure developed in OPTion is presently being used further in the ongoing project "StoryPool".]
University learning arrangements that lead to a proven teaching practice can be documented as didactic design patterns, the distribution and use of which can contribute to the improvement of overall teaching quality. Although these patterns can be helpful for other teachers, they are not yet shared frequently enough. Furthermore, existing descriptions of solution arrangements for university teaching are highly diverse.
With PatternPool, the OPTion project has developed a platform on which proven solution arrangements for university teaching can be documented, compiled and shared in a systematic way.
For this purpose, a technical tool in the sense of an open access infrastructure based on Wordpress was designed and refined, which enables the collecting, organising and analysing of didactical solution arrangements by using the pattern approach.
In cooperation with the Emden-Leer University of Applied Sciences, the potential of digitisation for Open Access is being used to make practical and (interlinked) scientific use of the patterns thus created, thus contributing to improving the quality of teaching and research on higher education didactics.
Open Content and Open Research will be linked using the tool in such a way as to reduce the acceptance problems that still exist in this area: namely both obstacles in reception and those in the (collaborative) production of structured descriptions of teaching-learning arrangements. The piloting of the tool in German-speaking countries (with option and as preparation for international expansion) was the core of the project.
With the pattern approach from architecture (cf. Alexander, Ishikawa, Silverstein, Jacobson, Fiksdahl-King & Angel, 1977), a proven strategy is at hand for capturing the regularity of solution arrangements and presenting them in such a way that it becomes clear to the recipient or future "user" for which problems and under which context conditions they are in principally useful.
StoryPool
In May 2020, a cooperation between the Lehrlabor (teaching laboratory, Universitätskolleg) and the HUL was started as a continuation of the BMBF-funded OPTion project. Over the past two years, OPTion has developed "PatternPool", an open access platform for the documentation and dissemination of proven teaching/learning practices that goes far beyond a basic collection of methods. The objective of the cooperation between the UK and the HUL is to utilise the experience and results of the teaching laboratory projects by drawing on the findings and results of OPTion, to further develop the existing pattern concept into a structured story concept and to link it with teaching laboratory objectives.
"StoryPool" transfers the experiences from the teaching lab projects into a systematic pattern structure and further processes them in narrative and video-based form. The uniform structure following the pattern approach makes it much easier to discover and perceive such concepts. Innovative and well-proven practices are systematised and can be accessed and compared more easily by interested teachers. In the spirit of Open Content, the resulting structured stories are then made available to the public. All entries are provided with individual DOIs and can thus be referenced.
The planned use of video for implementation of the "story" concept will further increase the chance of making the experiences of the teachers tangible to the senses, communicating the concepts behind the scenarios in a comprehensible way and achieving a motivating presentation. Stories from teaching practice structured in this manner create a new opportunity for the dissemination and sustainable use of the knowledge gained by the lecturers from the Lehrlabor projects.