Patterns¶

Reusable instructional designs at the lesson or unit level.

54 entries · 0 stable · 54 in review · 0 drafts

In Review¶

4C/ID (Four-Component Instructional Design) - A reusable whole-task policy for complex skills: learning tasks in simple-to-complex task classes with fading support, supportive and just-in-time procedural information, and selective part-task practice, whose response-dependent branches are untested proposals.
AI Tutoring - A reusable policy for tutoring by software, from step-based intelligent tutoring systems to conversational AI tutors and pedagogical or teachable agents: decide how much the tutor gives away, keep the learner doing the reasoning, judge it on unaided performance rather than assisted practice, and decide when a human tutor or mentor takes over.
Anchored Instruction - A reusable policy for building a lesson or unit around a shared narrative or media scenario: check that solving the anchor's problem requires the target concept, guide novices through it rather than leave them to search, connect the anchor explicitly to the concept, and judge the unit on individual use of the concept in a new situation.
Authentic Assessment - Assessing a capability through an extended task that mirrors real practice, with public criteria, feedback and revision before the final judgement, is expected to improve performance and transfer of that capability for learners who already have its components; no claim here tests authentic assessment against conventional tests, and guidance for novices, untrained self-assessment and scorer disagreement limit it.
Balanced pronunciation curriculum covering suprasegmentals, segmentals, and fluency, with a short list of central features selected by diagnosis - Diagnosing learners' spontaneous speech, choosing a short list of features across suprasegmentals, segmentals and fluency, teaching each explicitly and then in communicative use is expected to improve listeners' understanding of learners' spontaneous speech; no claim tests the balanced curriculum, and the nearest evidence shows explicit instruction reliably improves controlled production of targeted features, with smaller, less certain gains in spontaneous speech.
Blended Learning - A reusable course-level policy that assigns each part of a course to online or in-person work by what that mode does that the other does not, with the in-person time spent on practice and interaction and the online part supported for self-regulation and persistence; the wiki holds no test of the blend itself apart from the extra time and materials it usually brings.
Case-Based Learning - A reusable policy for learning from realistic cases: establish what learners can already do with the target concept, have them compare several cases that share a principle rather than study one at a time, make the principle explicit, and judge the unit on transfer to a new case rather than on enjoyment or recall.
Cognitive Apprenticeship - A reusable modeling, coaching, scaffolding, fading, articulation and exploration policy for complex cognitive skills, whose phase transitions depend on observed unaided performance and remain an untested design proposal.
Collaborative Evaluation - Learners who judge work against shared criteria alone, compare their judgments in a small group and then with a reference judgment are expected to judge new work more accurately and to improve their own work, where they know the domain well enough to see quality and the ratings carry no grade; no claim tests collaborative evaluation itself, and the evidence is peer-assessment, rubric-training and judgment-accuracy studies carried to it.
Collaborative Learning - A reusable policy for joint work that elicits each member's starting response, chooses a task that needs the members' reasoning, and uses individual checks rather than the group's product or self-report to choose the next activity.
Competency-Based Learning - A reusable course-level policy that maps a course to stated competencies, places each learner by a criterion-referenced response, lets pace vary and advances on demonstrated competence, with the validity of the evidence, the support offered, time and completion stated as conditions.
Concept Attainment - A reusable policy in which learners infer a concept's defining attributes by comparing labelled examples and non-examples, then classify new instances; expected to improve classification of new instances where the concept has identifiable attributes, the examples are chosen to contrast on them, guidance and a stated rule follow the induction, and learners can already interpret the instances.
Constructive Alignment - Constructive alignment is expected to raise performance on the intended capability when the stated outcome, the practised activities and the assessed task demand the same performance at the outcome's level, with practice and feedback before assessment; no claim here tests alignment itself, and one study found practice above the assessed level served a lower-level exam better.
Cooperative Learning - A reusable policy for small-group work that elicits each member's starting response, sets interdependence and individual accountability together, and uses individual checks rather than the group product to choose the next activity.
Debate - A reusable policy for structured argument on a contested question, in which preparing, defending and answering opposing cases is expected to improve individual argument, conditional on an arguable resolution, evidence and questioning in the rules, moderated turns, a debrief, and an individual outcome at a stated horizon.
Develop Understanding - For a learner meeting a concept or principle, a lesson that elicits their existing ideas, explains the idea while refuting any wrong one, guides its use with self-explanation prompts, checks on a changed item and connects it by comparing cases is expected to improve explanation and prediction on new cases, though no claim tests the sequence as a whole; its components are tested separately.
Direct Instruction - A reusable explicit-teaching policy for a structured target (elicit, explain and model, guide practice with checks, hand over on unaided success), qualified by task-specific expertise, outcome type and horizon.
Elaboration Theory - A reusable course-level sequencing policy: an epitome of the most general ideas, elaborated level by level toward detail and tied back to the whole by learner-built synthesis; one small study of hierarchical knowledge organisation bears on it, and no claim tests the sequence itself.
Emergent Curriculum - A reusable policy in which the teacher starts from a planned entry point, records what learners show sustained interest in, webs that interest to content worth learning (and to required standards), follows the thread with guided activity, and closes it on a product or shared account; expected to deepen engagement and self-directed inquiry, mainly with young children and with an adult guiding the activity, but no claim in this wiki tests it against a planned curriculum.
Epistemic Games - A reusable policy in which learners take a role in a simulation of a profession's work and learn its way of deciding; expected to improve decisions justified in the practice's terms where the practice has been studied, mentors model decisions and feedback and debriefs are given, and the outcome is judged outside the game; no claim in this wiki tests epistemic games.
Experience with Languaging Activities (ELAs) guided by a sequence of experience-based questions - A reusable routine in which learners answer, in talk or writing, what they experienced or read, what they think of it, what they learned and what more needs to be known, expected to improve understanding of content where the learned-answer prompt is content-specific and checked and learners can already make sense of the experience; no claim tests the routine as a whole, only parts of it.
Experiential Learning Cycle - A reusable sequence of bounded experience, prompted debrief, a stated and checked principle and a changed attempt with feedback, repeated across sessions with support fading, is expected to improve performance and near transfer where learners can interpret the experience; no claim tests the cycle as a whole, only its steps.
Formative Assessment - A reusable elicit–interpret–act–reobserve policy, qualified by what a response can establish and by whether a relevant next action is available.
Fostering Communities of Learning (FCL) - A reusable research-and-teach cycle in which learners become expert on one part of a shared theme, teach it to peers in jigsaw groups and read through reciprocal teaching, expected to raise each learner's understanding of the whole theme where research is guided, teaching is structured and every member is checked on every part; no claim tests the pattern as a whole, only its components.
Gagné's 9 Events of Instruction - A reusable lesson policy that moves a learner from an observed starting response through presentation, guided and independent performance with feedback, to a check at a stated horizon, keeping or dropping each event according to what the learner's responses show rather than running all nine by rote.
Game-Based Mastery Learning - A reusable policy in which progress through short, cumulative levels depends on passing a check on the target, with attempt-feedback-retry lessons, review of earlier levels and points paid for accuracy and improvement rather than activity; expected to raise performance outside the app for itemisable, practice-heavy skills, but no claim tests the combination as a whole, only a mastery gate without a game layer, a game layer without a gate, and one app's level system on in-app measures.
Learning by Producing (multimedia production as learning) - A reusable policy in which learners make a media product for a real audience to learn its content and media skills: study exemplars, learn the content (explicitly, for novices), plan a blueprint checked for content, produce in roles, revise against criteria and present; no claim tests learning by producing itself, and the sequence rests on neighbouring claims about projects, guidance, audiences, teaching others and the quality of learner-made representations.
Learning-for-Use (LfU) Model - A reusable unit policy in which learners first meet a task that makes a concept necessary, build it through guided inquiry with explicit synthesis, then use it in a consequential task and revisit it later; no claim in this wiki tests the model as a whole, and its phases rest on neighbouring claims (problem-first teaching helps conceptual learning and transfer when instruction builds on the attempts, guided inquiry beats unguided discovery for novices).
Massive Open Online Course (MOOC) - An open course at a scale where no teacher can answer each learner is expected to serve registrants who can direct their own study only if it replaces teacher time with short segments and self-checks, a planning activity and recurring prompts, calibrated peer review and audited automated scoring, and judges itself by each learner's purpose rather than completion over all registrants; no claim tests a MOOC against another course form, and the nearest tested components are an if-then planning activity that raised completion for some online learners and rubric guidance for peer raters.
Mastery Learning - A reusable gate-correct-recheck policy for cumulative units: elicit a criterion-referenced response, interpret a shortfall, give responsive correction and recheck on a parallel task before advancing, with time, attempts and the outcome horizon stated.
Mentor Support in Self-Paced Online Learning - A reusable policy for supporting learners in asynchronous, self-paced online courses and programmes through mentors, coaches or instructors who are available on demand and who reach out proactively: what to set up at the start, which progress signals trigger contact, what a contact does, how automated outreach and AI help divide the work with people, and how to check who the support actually reaches.
Multimedia Learning - A reusable policy for pairing an explanation's words with an informative picture, choosing placement, channel, pacing and segmentation from the learner's observed response and the intended outcome.
Online Course Design (Community of Inquiry) - An online course whose structure stays constant, whose weekly cycle builds interaction with content, the teacher and peers by design, whose first week centres on contact with a person and whose discussion is structured to reach a conclusion is expected to raise end-of-term performance and completion over one left to chance; no claim tests this, and the nearest claims bear on self-regulation support, if-then planning for completion and where online learners drop out.
PAIR-C Framework (Pattern, Agents, Interactions, Relations, Causality) - A reusable policy for teaching an emergent phenomenon (natural selection, collective behavior) by naming five dimensions on which decentralized, collective causation differs from sequential, individual causation and having learners use them while running an agent-based simulation; one quasi-experiment with pre-service teachers tests it, finding a near-transfer advantage over the same simulations without the framing, trends on deep understanding and misconceptions, and no far transfer.
Peer Instruction - A reusable question, individual vote, peer discussion, revote and explanation policy for conceptual questions, with an isomorphic individual check to separate revised reasoning from copying.
Peer Teaching - A reusable session routine in which paired learners who have studied the material take turns preparing and teaching it to a partner who must respond, correct errors with a scripted move, swap roles and are then checked alone; meta-analyses test peer tutoring and teaching against no tutoring or studying, WWC reviews of the scripted PALS routine find early-reading gains and small, often nonsignificant or null effects elsewhere, and no claim tests the doses, role swaps or hand-over points.
Positive Behavioral Interventions And Supports - For a whole school, teaching three to five positively stated expectations in every setting, acknowledging them specifically, reviewing disaggregated discipline data monthly and adding daily small-group and then function-based individual support for students who do not respond is expected to reduce referrals and exclusions; one group-randomized trial in 37 Maryland elementary schools found fewer office referrals and small gains in teacher-rated behaviour, largest for children at risk at baseline, but no difference in out-of-school suspensions, and one quasi-experiment found fewer suspensions only where all three tiers ran with fidelity.
Practice with Simulated People - A reusable policy for rehearsing an interpersonal or professional performance with a simulated person (a standardized or virtual patient, a simulated client, customer or colleague, avatar or simulated students, a pedagogical agent, or an AI role-play partner): name the performance and how it will be judged, give novices an example first, run short repeated encounters with feedback and a debrief after each, vary and harden the scenarios across sessions, and judge the unit on a blinded performance with a different person rather than on in-simulation scores or satisfaction.
Problem-Based Learning - A reusable policy for problem-centred units: establish what learners already know of the target content, guide novices explicitly, use a problem-first phase only where learners can generate partial solutions and instruction follows, and judge the unit on individual outcomes.
Professional Development - A reusable policy for teachers: one observable classroom practice is modelled, rehearsed, enacted with the teacher's own students and given feedback in coaching cycles over a term, with support faded and use checked later; expected to change observed practice where the target is specific and coach time is sustained, though no claim here compares it with one-off workshops.
Programmed Instruction - A reusable sequence in which content is broken into small frames, each needing an active response that is confirmed or corrected at once, with progress at the learner's pace or by branching on the response, behind a unit check; expected to help with facts, rules and procedures that have checkable answers when steps fit prior knowledge and a dated schedule guards against non-completion. No claim in this wiki tests programmed instruction itself; the nearest evidence is from self-paced mastery programs (PSI), feedback after retrieval and intelligent tutoring.
Project Space and Instructional Space - A reusable policy in which learners work on an authentic project, pause it at a diagnosed gap in a component skill, practise that skill in a separate instructional space to an explicit criterion and then resume the project; expected to improve individual mastery and transfer where gaps can be diagnosed and instruction delivered, but no claim in this wiki tests the design as a whole.
Self-Directed Learning - A staged policy for handing learners control over goals, resources, pace and evaluation within a structured course, with a written plan, taught self-direction moves, dated check-ins and calibrated self-evaluation; no claim in this wiki tests the hand-over as such, and learner control alone showed a near-zero effect while self-pacing cost completion.
Self-Regulated Learning - A reusable plan–monitor–act policy that makes regulation explicit with task-specific prompts, modelled self-assessment and a usable next action, then reads the response before handing regulation to the learner.
Shared power: previously excluded students, families, and communities co-create and shape educational systems, policies, and practices - For a group present in an educational decision process but structurally unable to exercise its decisions, giving it a body with written decision standing, meetings redesigned around its language and agenda, facilitation handed over across the cycle and a report-back on every recommendation is expected to sustain its participation and change what is decided where outreach and interpretation alone do not; one before/after case in this wiki tests a version of this, and the rest is participants' accounts.
Social Emotional Learning - For school-age learners, a sustained programme, delivered mainly by their own teachers, that explicitly teaches one named social or emotional skill at a time, rehearses it actively with feedback and has the other adults around them (staff, and families of young children) cue it in daily routines and academic work is expected to improve those skills most, and conduct, distress and achievement by smaller amounts, with gains persisting at follow-up; meta-analyses test universal K–12 SEL programmes as a whole against controls, but no claim tests this sequence's steps, adult learners or one-off formats.
Spaced Learning - A reusable policy for distributing learning opportunities, preserving total practice, gap and assessment horizon when comparing schedules.
Structured Academic Controversy - A reusable policy for cooperative argument on a contested question, in which pairs argue assigned positions, restate and then reverse them, and write a joint conclusion, expected to support each learner's reasoned, individually checked position, conditional on an arguable question, evidence for both sides, an individual check and a stated horizon; untested as a whole.
Structured Peer Review - A reusable policy in which learners comment on one another's drafts against explicit criteria and each author then revises before the work is judged; expected to improve the revised work, and possibly the reviewers' own later work, where reviewers are calibrated on the criteria, comments point to the draft and suggest changes, revision is required and stakes are formative; no claim tests the full cycle, though peer feedback on writing and peer assessment are each tested against no feedback.
Team Based Learning - A unit-level readiness-assurance policy (individual closed-book test, team retest with immediate feedback, appeals, targeted clarification, then team application) whose test-and-feedback steps rest on retrieval evidence and whose team formation, application exercises and peer evaluation do not.
Think-Pair-Share - A reusable think, pair, share policy for open questions, in which protected individual think time and a partner exchange of reasoning are expected to widen and improve public responses, conditional on the prompt, pair dynamics, individual accountability and an immediate horizon.
Traditional Lecture-Based Instruction - A lecture-centered course (lecture, assigned study, then discussion or assessment) is expected to serve information objectives about as well as other methods but to underperform discussion and active-learning courses for thought, attitude and skill objectives and on exams and pass rates; claims test lecture only as a comparator, and the segmented sequence here is untested.
Worked Examples - A reusable example-first policy for a structured task, qualified by task-specific knowledge, representation and intended outcome.
Workshop Model - A reusable lesson and unit structure (a short mini-lesson teaching one strategy, a protected block of learners' own work while the teacher confers, then a share) expected to build skill in a practice when the mini-lesson teaches strategies explicitly and support is matched and faded; no claim in this wiki tests the workshop model as a whole, and the nearest, on process writing, found a modest gain that did not reach struggling writers.