Assessment is an integral part of teaching and learning. If the relationship between teaching and learning were causal, i. e. if students always mastered the intended learning outcomes of a particular sequence of instruction, assessment would be superfluous. Experience and research suggest this is not the case: what is learnt can often be quite different from what is taught. Formative assessment is motivated by a concern with the elicitation of relevant information about student understanding and / or achievement, its interpretation and an exploration of how it can lead to actions that result in better learning. In the context of a policy drive towards technology-enhanced approaches to teaching and learning, the question of the role of digital technologies is key and it is the latter on which this project particularly focuses. The project and its deliverables have been informed by recent and relevant literature, in particular recent work by Black andIn this work, they put forward a framework which suggests that assessment for learning their term for formative assessment can be conceptualised as consisting of a number of aspects and five keystrategies. The key aspects revolve around the where the learner is going, where the learner is right now and how she can get there and examines the role played by the teacher, peers and the learner. Language: English Keywords: assessments, case studies, design patterns, e-assessment

Technologically enhanced learning environments raise complex challenges for their designers, developers and users. Design patterns and pattern languages have recently emerged as a potential framework for addressing some of these challenges. However, the uptake of design patterns has been slow outside of the computer science community. We argue that this is largely a consequence of a weak positioning of pattern languages, as a form of delivering expert knowledge to layperson, and suggest an alternative view: the development of a pattern language as a community endeavour. In terms of open education, the workshop model can be viewed as an open production process for developing educational resources, in our case design patterns. We propose a model of pattern elicitation workshops, in which collaborative development of a pattern language provides a framework for sharing design knowledge within interdisciplinary communities. This model was iteratively developed at five international conferences. It was then postulated as a design pattern itself, encompassing a series of practices and a set of supporting tools. We believe this model could be applied in a broad range of communities concerned with the development of open digital educational resources.

Developing a pattern language is a non-trivial problem. A critical requirement is a method to support pattern writers with abstraction, so as they can produce generalised patterns. In this paper, we address this issue by developing a structured process...

Design is a critical to the successful development of any interactive learning environment (ILE). Moreover, in technology enhanced learning (TEL), the design process requires input from many diverse areas of expertise. As such, anyone undertaking tool development is required to directly address the design challenge from multiple perspectives. We provide a motivation and rationale for design approaches for learning technologies that draws upon Simon's seminal proposition of Design Science (Simon, 1969). We then review the application of Design Experiments (Brown, 1992) and Design Patterns (Alexander et al., 1977) and argue that a patterns approach has the potential to address many of the critical challenges faced by learning technologists.

The Planet (Pattern Language Network for Web 2.0 in Learning) project aimed to develop and demonstrate an effective community-based mechanism for capturing and sharing successful practice, based on the pattern approach. A pattern describes an effective solution to a recurrent problem embedded in a specific context and is characterised by being drawn from successful practice rather than from theory. Patterns are easy and intuitive to use, so supporting transfer of practice to new contexts. However, the process of eliciting and capturing patterns from authentic practice is not trivial and is rarely an inclusive community-based activity. It is this problem that Planet has sought to address.

This pattern language focuses on pedagogy that promotes experiential learning for beginners to advanced level.

Contains a large number of seminal articles and essays that illustrate the growing importance of patterns in application development.

An introduction to the history, origins, and essential concepts and terminology of software patterns (including numerous pointers to other WWW sources of information on the subject). An earlier revision of this paper appeared in the May 1997 Object Magazine Online (Vol. 3, No. 5).

Coming from architecture, through computer science, pattern-based design spread into other disciplines and is nowadays recognized as a powerful way of capturing and reusing effective design practice. However, current pedagogical pattern approaches lack widespread adoption, both by users and authors, and are still limited to individual initiatives. This paper contributes to creating a shared understanding of what a pattern system is by defining the key terms. Moreover, the paper builds upon and extends a set of existing functional and non-functional requirements for pattern systems, adds structure to these requirements, and derives essential use cases following a goal-based approach for both pattern maintenance and pattern application. Finally, implications concerning the pedagogical use of pattern-based design are drawn, concluding that a stronger focus on the underlying (pedagogical) value system is required in order to make a pattern system a meaningful tool for effective educational design.

This paper reports findings from a survey and interviews with children aged 11201316 years, teachers and parents on their attitudes to e-safety in relation to social networking and media creation (Web 2.0) and their practices at school and at home. The results showed that 74% of the children surveyed have used social network (SN) sites and that a substantial minority regularly interact socially online with people they have not met face-to-face. Online interaction forms a different, although overlapping, social space to that of face-to-face friendships. Despite a desire from some teachers to explore the benefits of Web 2.0 for creative and social learning, they report being constrained by a need to show a duty of care that avoids worst-case risk to children, to restrict access to SN sites. The respondents also report more direct concerns about Internet bullying and exam cheating. We also report a Policy Delphi process with a panel of 30 people with expertise in Web 2.0 and e-safety. The panel reached a general consensus that schools should move towards allowing access to Web 2.0 sites, with children being educated in responsible and creative learning.

The rapid and widespread uptake of social software, or what are popularly referred to as Web 2.0 technologies, has occurred very much from under the radar and therefore taken many, if not most of us, by surprise. As Crook and Harrison (2008) points out, the '2.0 ness' in this definition refers to an assumed step change in the evolution of the Web, which has now become more open, personalized, participative and social. Or it has become more powerful and widely accessible for all and for most of the time. The current family of technologies that this term refers to range from tools emphasizing social networking (e.g. Facebook, Bebo and LinkedIn) and media sharing (e.g. MySpace, YouTube and Flickr) to virtual worlds (e.g. Second Life), which constitute this more social and participative web. These characteristics are realized through various technical features, such as: the ability of all to write to and publish on the Web; being able to exploit the 'long-tail' (Anderson 2004), or network effects, which provides the means to support numerous and yet small or modestly sized communities of interest; and, the employment of feeds and recommendation systems to bring information and media to us along with a community rating of its value. For brevity, I will use the term social software throughout the rest of this editorial. This will also subsume the 'Web 2.0 ness' referred to earlier, as the pressing question addressed by this special issue is: What are the implications for learning?

In the UK in particular, in addition to many local initiatives, organizations such as the Joint Information Systems Committee (JISC) have supported a raft of projects that have aimed to take the popularity, participation and general energy of social software into education, to raise levels of relevance, motivation and engagement. But so far, the findings have been very mixed, with many initiatives suggesting the necessity to both better understand learning and better understand 'the social web'– before proposing solutions that draw the two together. Although an initial examination of the social, communicative and knowledge (or representational) practices that are supported by social software suggest they share a lot of commonality with key learning practices, Ravenscroft et al. (2008) have pointed out that

One of the problems with recent educational articulations of social software and Web 2.0 is the misalignment of social practices that are ostensibly oriented towards and motivated by 'interest' with those that are oriented towards and motivated by 'learning'. … Whilst these purposes and the practices they entail are not mutually exclusive, they often involve different processes of meaning making. (Ravenscroft et al. 2008, p. 433):

And they go on to elaborate:

In other words, whilst specific practices such as personal content creation and expression, communication, media sharing, multimodal dialogue and social networking are relevant to communities of interest and learning, these will usually be orchestrated differently in both. (Ravenscroft et al. 2008, p. 433)

This paper presents some of the findings from a recent project that conducted a virtual ethnographic study of three formal courses in higher education that use 'Web 2.0' or social technologies for learning and teaching. It describes the pedagogies adopted within these courses, and goes on to explore some key themes emerging from the research and relating to the pedagogical use of weblogs and wikis in particular. These themes relate primarily to the academy's tendency to constrain and contain the possibly more radical effects of these new spaces. Despite this, the findings present a range of student and tutor perspectives which show that these technologies have significant potential as new collaborative, volatile and challenging environments for formal learning.

Boundaries between formal and informal learning settings are shaped by influences beyond learners' control. This can lead to the proscription of some familiar technologies that learners may like to use from some learning settings. This contested demarcation is not well documented. In this paper, we introduce the term 'digital dissonance' to describe this tension with respect to learners' appropriation of Web 2.0 technologies in formal contexts. We present the results of a study that explores learners' in- and out-of-school use of Web 2.0 and related technologies. The study comprises two data sources: a questionnaire and a mapping activity. The contexts within which learners felt their technologies were appropriate or able to be used are also explored. Results of the study show that a sense of 'digital dissonance' occurs around learners' experience of Web 2.0 activity in and out of school. Many learners routinely cross institutionally demarcated boundaries, but the implications of this activity are not well understood by institutions or indeed by learners themselves. More needs to be understood about the transferability of Web 2.0 skill sets and ways in which these can be used to support formal learning.

This paper investigates the impact of Web. 2.0 technologies on the ways learning can be conceived of as a narrative process within contemporary contexts, using blogs as an illustrative example. It is premised on the concept of narrative as a way in which individuals represent and organize experience in order to learn from it and make it shareable with others within social contexts. The first part of the paper offers a theoretical analysis of the role of narrative in the social construction of knowledge by the ways it enables users of Web 2.0 technologies to participate meaningfully in the exchange of experiences and ideas. The second part of the paper offers a 'situated' analysis of the narrative practices engaged with by users of blogs. A 'narrative trail' is used to provide a contextualized instance of the narrative practices which are involved. The paper concludes by examining the research issues which are raised and suggests a research agenda which is needed to explore Web 2.0 technologies as social utilities affecting knowledge production, in which the adaptation of narrative theory is a central feature.

The use of design patterns is now well established as an approach within the field of software systems as well as within the field of architecture. An initial effort was made to harness patterns as a tool for elaborating the design of the elements of personal learning environments as part of the University of Bolton's Personal Learning Environment project; however, this earlier effort had a number of limitations that prompted a revisit to the pattern language documented here. In particular, the initial patterns, while functionally useful, lacked some of the moral and generative qualities that are the essential qualities of an effective pattern language. This paper presents a revised pattern language focused around two primary categories, learning networks, and personal learning tools.

This paper identifies issues in developing a three-year duration, work-focussed undergraduate degree programme with a model of inquiry-based learning supported through online communities of inquiry. On the course, students examine their current work-practice to identify issues and then plan, implement and evaluate an improvement strategy. Negotiated learning activities and facilitated networking environments are key to providing students with a highly personalised and relevant learning experience. Students were surveyed and interviewed through questionnaire, telephone and face-to-face meeting. Staff were asked to produce accounts identifying major issues within their particular role, describing and evaluating steps taken to mitigate them. In both cases, transcripts were examined using interpretive phenomenological analysis and this grounded approach was used to identify key issues. The findings show that challenges for the improvement of the learning experience included a range of issues unified by concerns regarding diversity of approach and complexity. It is proposed that this was partly due to knowledge held tacitly but unarticulated. To improve practice, a Pattern Language approach is proposed. In order to articulate values and ideas, a Pattern Language category of Online Community of Inquiry is outlined. These patterns are framed as instructions to inform an approach to new working practices, technologies and systems local to the context in which they were found. It is suggested that this approach helps teaching staff, developers, administrators, and students working together to understand and overcome problems in their own contexts, by adapting these and other patterns.

Despite a diversity of software architectures supporting information visualization, it is often difficult to identify, evaluate, and re-apply the design solutions implemented within such frameworks. One popular and effective approach for addressing such difficulties is to capture successful solutions in design patterns, abstract descriptions of interacting software components that can be customized to solve design problems within a particular context. Based upon a review of existing frameworks and our own experiences building visualization software, we present a series of design patterns for the domain of information visualization. We discuss the structure, context of use, and interrelations of patterns spanning data representation, graphics, and interaction. By representing design knowledge in a reusable form, these patterns can be used to facilitate software design, implementation, and evaluation, and improve developer education and communication.

This pattern language in progress proposes some successful techniques to assist with teaching and learning. For professional educators, these patterns may seem obvious, even trivial, because they have used them so often. But for those newer to teaching, they offer a way for experienced teachers to pass on their experiences. But experienced teachers could also benefit from these patterns. Educators face new challenges regularly, particularly in fast-moving subject areas, and the experience captured in these patterns may help identify solutions for these new challenges.

For more than two decades much of the pattern language literature, within the field of Human Computer Interaction (HCI), has focused on the possible benefits pattern languages may provide, but there has been very little empirical work to support these claims. It has been suggested that interaction patterns or pattern languages in HCI may address some of the problems inherent in designing interactive systems by supporting reuse, capturing design knowledge, enabling the sharing of design knowledge, and facilitating communication among designers and users. This study examined the impact of a pattern language on the design of information retrieval interfaces, in terms of the quality of the interfaces and the time to design the interfaces. Participants created paper and pencil interfaces based on the given design task. Participants were exposed to either a pattern language, guidelines, or no structuring technique. There were no statistically significant differences between the three groups in terms of the quality of the interfaces and time to design the interfaces. The results of this study suggest that the value of pattern languages in HCI may not be in reuse, at the early stages of design, or in terms of the quality of the resulting designs, in domains familiar to designers. Although there was no apparent impact of the pattern language on the early stage designs, the results of a follow-up study suggest there is a significant correlation between the existence of patterns in commercial systems and the overall usability of those systems. Therefore, we suggest that we, as a community, very closely examine the current state of pattern languages in HCI before continuing to move forward. As a community, we need to shift our focus away from discussing the possible benefits of pattern languages and trying to build pattern collections. And instead, focus on trying to fully understand the value of pattern languages in HCI. In doing so, the HCI community, will then begin to see the benefits from all the great efforts in this area.

Processes and tasks in organizations become increasingly complex and dynamic. This requires managers of expert teams to quickly gain knowledge and insight outside their prime area of expertise. In these situations analysis tools and decision support tools are required. Often, such tools are used by experts to compose models that managers can use to gain specific insight in complex tasks and decisions. An observed paradox in this process is that once the first model is made, the insight into the system reveals the “real problem” and thus several iterations of the analysis, design and modeling are required to create a model that provides the required support. A proposed solution to increase the efficiency of re-designing is the use of patterns, also named building blocks. This allows the expert to re-use components to accommodate new requirements. However, the advantage of building blocks goes beyond re-use, design efficiency and flexibility. This paper argues that in addition to the benefits described above, there is a specific added value for the use of building blocks by novices to acquire analysis, modeling and design skills. We propose that building blocks decrease the cognitive load of both the design task and the effort of acquiring these skills. We use cognitive load theory from educational psychology to theoretically underpin this proposition. Empirical evidence is presented through two exploratory experiments.

Learning design patterns assist the development of effective courses, because patterns capture successful solutions. Pedagogical patterns are commonly created by human cognitive processing in "writer's workshops". Inductive techniques could be used to detect or determine patterns in existing data, or learning designs. This assumes that the learning designs are available in a format that is machine interpretable. The IMS Learning Design specification enables the formal coding of learning designs. We explain that we expect patterns to occur in the method section of a learning design and in particular in acts. We explore several inductive techniques that could be applied to existing learning designs in order to detect and determine patterns and discuss how these could be applied to create new learning designs.

Nikos Salingaros posits the importance of architectural pattern in man’s intellectual development, examining how twentieth century architectural attitudes towards decoration and pattern have impoverished man’s experience of both mathematics and the built environment.

Architect, scientist, and writer Christopher Alexander is one of the most remarkable thinkers and makers of our time. His many books include A Pattern Language (1977), The Timeless Way of Building (1979), and A Foreshadowing of Twenty-First Century Art: The Color and Geometry of Very Early Turkish Carpets (1993). This essay is his recent effort to distill the major discoveries in his masterful four-volume The Nature of Order (2002-2005), published by the Center for Environmental Structure in Berkeley, CA. He wishes to thank Maggie Alexander and Randy Schmidt for help in editing this essay.

The human race has multiplied tremendously since its origins in Africa millions of years ago. During its stay on earth, it has changed the world dramatically through social and technological innovation. In spite of great success in increasing its numbers and gaining dominion over much of the planet, the problems that humankind has created – war, famine, environmental degradation, injustice, and a host of others – may be increasingly immune to its attempts to correct them. Unfortunately there is ample evidence that the economic and political elites of the world are not able – or willing – to actually address these problems effectively, humanely, and ecologically responsibly. Civil society is emerging as an important force to address these problems, but in spite of best intentions civil society efforts are often disjointed, duplicative, inflexible, ineffectual and destructively competitive.

Back in the 1980s when actor Lorne Greene served as the pitchman for Alpo dog food, the TV commercials were careful to point out that he indeed fed Alpo to his dogs. So, the idea that someone would use the products they were making became known as "eating your own dog food." An alternative explanation for the term I've heard is that each year the president of Kal Kan Pet Food would eat a can of the company's dog food at the annual shareholders' meeting.

Regardless of its genesis, the software industry has adopted the phrase to mean that a company uses its own products. Somewhere along the line, the noun "dog food" appears to have morphed into a verb. It's said that Microsoft has aggressively adopted the concept of dogfooding, at least within its development groups. Likewise, the Eclipse development group will tell you that they all use Eclipse as a development platform and therefore "eat their own dogfood."

There are many markets and applications where dogfooding might indeed be possible. The question is, should we care?

Designing systems for assessing inquiry in science requires expertise across domains that rarely reside in a single individual: science content and science learning, assessment design, task authoring, psychometrics, delivery technologies, and systems engineering. The goal of the PADI project is to provide a conceptual framework for designing inquiry tasks that coordinates such efforts, and provides supporting tools to facilitate them. This paper reports progress on one facet of PADI: design patterns for assessing science inquiry. Design patterns bridge knowledge about key aspects of science inquiry and the structures of a coherent assessment argument, in a form that will guide task authoring and implementation specifications. We discuss the nature and role of design patterns in assessment design, suggest contents and structures for creating and working with them, and illustrate the ideas with a small start-up set of design pattern

Assessment design patterns lay out considerations for building assessment tasks that address targeted aspects or situations of language use. They differ from test specifications by focusing on assessment arguments at a narrative level and are organized around aspects of language use that could be detailed in different ways for different purposes or circumstances. A design pattern thus encapsulates experience and research about some aspect of language use, organized around the structure of assessment arguments, as a starting point for designing tasks that will in addition satisfy the constraints and purposes of the job at hand. The rationale and structure of design patterns are described, and their use in language assessment is illustrated with examples concerning the use of language for special purposes, contextualized listening skills, and content-specific story-tellings.

Lissitz and Samuelsen (2007) argue that the unitary conception of validity for educational assessments is too broad to guide applied work. They call for attention to considerations and procedures that focus on "test development and analysis of the test itself" and propose that those activities be collectively termed content validity. The author of this article describes work that makes more explicit the underlying principles of assessment design, thereby providing conceptual foundations for familiar practices and supporting the development of new ones. By structuring design activities around assessment arguments, the test developer accrues evidence in passing for what Embretson (1983) calls "construct representation" argumentation for validity

When developing groupware satisfying user requirements is even more difficult than in the context of single-user application development; not only the interaction with the application itself but also the interaction between group members must be respected. Current design methodologies insufficiently focus the designers’ attention to this aspect. Therefore, we propose the Oregon Software Development Process (OSDP) that fosters end-user participation, structures the interaction between end-users and developers, and emphasizes the use of a shared language between users and developers.

Groupware development support should educate developers on how to design groupware applications and foster the reuse of proven solutions. Additionally, it should foster communication between developers and end-users, since they need a common language and understanding of the problem space. Groupware frameworks provide solutions for the development of groupware applications by means of building blocks. They have become a prominent means to support developers, but from our experience frameworks have properties that complicate their usage and do not sufficiently support groupware developers. We argue for a pattern approach to support the technical aspects of groupware development. Patterns describe solutions to recurring issues in groupware development. They serve as educational and communicative vehicle for reaching the above goals. In this article, we provide a pattern language focusing on technical issues during groupware development. Experiences when using the language in an educational setting and a product development setting have shown that the patterns are a supportive means for the proposed goals.

This paper was the first initiative to try to define Web 2.0 and understand its implications for the next generation of software, looking at both design patterns and business modes. Web 2.0 is the network as platform, spanning all connected devices; Web 2.0 applications are those that make the most of the intrinsic advantages of that platform: delivering software as a continually-updated service that gets better the more people use it, consuming and remixing data from multiple sources, including individual users, while providing their own data and services in a form that allows remixing by others, creating network effects through an architecture of participation, and going beyond the page metaphor of Web 1.0 to deliver rich user experiences.

The design of commercial products that are intended to serve millions of people has been a challenge for collaborative approaches. The creation and use of fictional users, concrete representations commonly referred to as ‘personas’, is a relatively new interaction design technique. It is not without problems and can be used inappropriately, but based on experience and analysis it has extraordinary potential. Not only can it be a powerful tool for true participation in design, it also forces designers to consider social and political aspects of design that otherwise often go unexamined.

Scenarios of human-computer interaction help us to understand and to create computer systems and applications as artifacts of human activity Ñas things to learn from, as tools to use in one’s work, as media for interacting with other people. Scenario-based design of information technology addresses five technical challenges: Scenarios evoke reflection in the content of design work, helping developers coordinate design action and reflection. Scenarios are at once concrete and flexible, helping developers manage the fluidy of design situations. Scenarios afford multiple views of an interaction, diverse kinds and amounts of detailing, helping developers manage the many consequences entailed by any given design move. Scenarios can also be abstracted and categorized, helping designers to recognize, capture, and reuse generalizations, and to address the challenge that technical knowledge often lags the needs of technical design. Finally, scenarios promote work-oriented communication among stakeholders, helping to make design activities more accessible to the great variety of expertise that can contribute to design, and addressing the challenge that external constraints designers and clients often distract attention from the needs and concerns of the people who will use the technology.

The term "Web 2.0" is used to describe applications that distinguish themselves from previous generations of software by a number of principles. Existing work shows that Web 2.0 applications can be successfully exploited for technology-enhance learning. However, in-depth analyses of the relationship between Web 2.0 technology on the one hand and teaching and learning on the other hand are still rare. In this article, we will analyze the technological principles of the Web 2.0 and describe their pedagogical implications on learning. We will furthermore show that Web 2.0 is not only well suited for learning but also for research on learning: the wealth of services that is available and their openness regarding API and data allow to assemble prototypes of technology-supported learning applications in amazingly small amount of time. These prototypes can be used to evaluate research hypotheses quickly. We will present two example prototypes and discuss the lessons we learned from building and using these prototypes.

* This book provides practical, proven advice for encouraging adoption of your wiki project and growing it into a useful collaboration tool or vibrant online community

• Gives wiki users a toolbox of thriving wiki patterns, which enable newcomers to avoid making common mistakes or fumbling around for the solutions to the same problems as their predecessors
• Explains the major stages of wiki adoption and explores patterns that apply to each stage
• Presents concrete, proven examples of techniques that have helped people grow vibrant collaborative communities and change the way they work for the better
• Reviews the overall process, including setting up initial content, encouraging people to contribute, dealing with disruptive elements, fixing typos and broken links, making sure pages are in their correct categories, and more

A revelatory examination of how the wildfirelike spread of new forms of social interaction enabled by technology is changing the way humans form groups and exist within them, with profound long-term economic and social effects-for good and for ill

A handful of kite hobbyists scattered around the world find each other online and collaborate on the most radical improvement in kite design in decades. A midwestern professor of Middle Eastern history starts a blog after 9/11 that becomes essential reading for journalists covering the Iraq war. Activists use the Internet and e-mail to bring offensive comments made by Trent Lott and Don Imus to a wide public and hound them from their positions. A few people find that a world-class online encyclopedia created entirely by volunteers and open for editing by anyone, a wiki, is not an impractical idea. Jihadi groups trade inspiration and instruction and showcase terrorist atrocities to the world, entirely online. A wide group of unrelated people swarms to a Web site about the theft of a cell phone and ultimately goads the New York City police to take action, leading to the culprit's arrest.

With accelerating velocity, our age's new technologies of social networking are evolving, and evolving us, into new groups doing new things in new ways, and old and new groups alike doing the old things better and more easily. You don't have to have a MySpace page to know that the times they are a changin'. Hierarchical structures that exist to manage the work of groups are seeing their raisons d'tre swiftly eroded by the rising technological tide. Business models are being destroyed, transformed, born at dizzying speeds, and the larger social impact is profound.

One of the culture's wisest observers of the transformational power of the new forms of tech-enabled social interaction is Clay Shirky, and Here Comes Everybody is his marvelous reckoning with the ramifications of all this on what we do and who we are. Like Lawrence Lessig on the effect of new technology on regimes of cultural creation, Shirky's assessment of the impact of new technology on the nature and use of groups is marvelously broad minded, lucid, and penetrating; it integrates the views of a number of other thinkers across a broad range of disciplines with his own pioneering work to provide a holistic framework for understanding the opportunities and the threats to the existing order that these new, spontaneous networks of social interaction represent. Wikinomics, yes, but also wikigovernment, wikiculture, wikievery imaginable interest group, including the far from savory. A revolution in social organization has commenced, and Clay Shirky is its brilliant chronicler.

This paper presents a critical review of patterns and pattern languages in human computer interaction (HCI). In recent years, patterns and pattern languages have received considerable attention in HCI for their potential as a means for developing and communicating information and knowledge to support good design. This review examines the background to patterns and pattern languages in HCI, and seeks to locate pattern languages in relation to other approaches to interaction design. The review explores four key issues: what is a pattern? what is a pattern language? how are patterns and pattern languages used? and how are values reflected in the pattern-based approaches to design? Following on from the review, a future research agenda is proposed for patterns and pattern languages in HCI.

In this paper, we examine the contribution that pattern languages could make to user participation in the design of interactive systems, and we report on our experiences of using pattern languages in this way. In recent years, there has been a growing interest in the use of patterns and pattern languages in the design of interactive systems. Pattern languages were originally developed by the architect, Christopher Alexander, both as a way of understanding the nature of building designs that promote a ‘humane’ or living built environment; and as a practical tool to aid in participatory design of buildings. Our experience suggests that pattern languages do have considerable potential to support participatory design in HCI, but that many pragmatic issues remain to be resolved.