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The Development of “Teaching Management Patterns” from the
Perspective of IT Infrastructure as a Tool for Consulting
and Further Development in a European University Alliance
Presented by Martin Ebner, Graz University of Technology, Austria
Authors: Sandra Schön, Katharina Gasplmayr, Martin Ebner, Jesus Alcober, Christian Hoppe,
Markus Koschutnig-Ebner, Fernando M. da Silva, Behnam Taraghi
Affiliations: Graz University of Technology, Polytechnic University of Catalonia
Darmstadt University of Technology, University of Lisbon
Conference: EDMEDIA Conference 2024, Brussels
Available under
CC BY 4.0 International
(excluded are figures with © statement)
Agenda
•Background: European
University Alliance Unite!
•Research Approach
•Results
•Teaching Pattern
•Decision Tree
•Discussion
Slides
The slides are available online at:
Schön, S., Gasplmayr, K., Ebner, M.,
Alcober, J., Hoppe, C., Koschutnig-
Ebner, M., da Silva, F., M. & Taraghi,
B.(2024, July). The Development of
“Teaching Management Patterns”
from the Perspective of IT
Infrastructure as a Tool for Consulting
and Further Development in a
European University Alliance. Graz
University of Technology.
https://doi.org/10.3217/mqpnc-zff39
European University Initiative
•Over 40 European
university alliances
promoting academic
exchange and innovation
•Goals: enhance academic
exchange, research
cooperation, educational
innovation
© European Commission,
https://education.ec.europa.eu/education-
levels/higher-education/european-universities-
initiative
Background: Unite!
Case Study: Unite! Alliance
•https://www.unite-university.eu/
•Nine member universities
From Unite! Mission Statement 2030:
“Unite! creates the hybrid (virtual, physical and blended)
and multilingual Unite! trans-European Campus with
easily accessible joint educational offerings, shared and
pooled resources, efficient services and green mobility”
© Unite! alliance, https://www.unite-university.eu/
Community 2 „Digital Campus“
•Responsible („only“) for digital
infrastructure for teaching and
learning
•Challenges in digital collaboration
and infrastructure integration
That’s us!
(taken at our last project meeting,
03/2024 at TU Graz)
(c) Unite! Cm.2 | TU Graz
Organised in seven tasks
Figure 1: Overview of the Unite! Digital Campus Infrastructure Key Platforms and their key applications
Unite!‘s Digital Campus Infrastructure
Metacampus Platform
Features of the Unite! Metacampus as federated platform in aEuropean Alliance.Source:Ebner et al., 2023.
Challenge
A lot of different (potential) use
cases for the Metacampus
The alliance-wide working group on quality
assurance in research would like to offer
continuing education for junior staff at all partner
universities. It must take place online, with
alternating joint Webinars and self-learning
phases. Participants should receive a certificate
of participation upon completion.
Three lecturers from different Unite! universities
have developed a joint lecture which they would
like to offer with common grading procedures to
students across partner universities. Upon
completion each student will receive a certificate
from her/his university. They would also like to
admit other students from the alliance as
participants and issue them a certificate of
participation.
One teacher would like to open-up a small series
of contributions on a current research topic to
other alliance members and would like to post
impulse videos online and discuss them with
colleagues and students. She would like
participants to receive a certificate of attendance
for this joint activity in the field.
Our challenge
•need of a good overview and
consulting support
•for the support teams at all 9
partner universities,
•which should support teachers
and staff of the universities to
decide if the Metacampus should
be used for each specific
learning activity, program or
course.
Our questions
•How can different teaching formats and
settings in a university alliance be
described in such a way that they can be
well described as “teaching management
patterns” for implementation of suitable
digital tools -especially when the
development is dynamic and open?
•What does counsel for e-learning support
teams for all Unite! universities should look
like?
Our approach
•We looked for existing
„pattern approaches“
•We developed teaching
patterns for Unite!
Teaching Pattern
Approaches & Understanding
Existing work on this
-Xu & Liu (2016) outline in their paper how computer and web technology should support
the management of teaching in Chinese schools in the future.
-Tahalli & Prasojo (2021) use the term to refer to typical patterns they observed in the
design of online teaching during the Covid-19 pandemic.
-Zhou (2020) outlines a “unified automatic management service platform” which will be
used to improve the “learning management pattern” in higher vocational education in
China.
-Alexander (1977) understands pattern as an entity that describes a problem “which occurs
over and over again in our environment, and then describes the core of the solution to that
problem, in such a way you can use this solution in a million times over, without ever doing
in the same way twice” (p. X), Alexander has used this approach in the field of urban
development and transportation planning)
-Others have adapted Alexanders idea for teaching as well: Rohse & Anderson (2006), for
example, used the idea of “design pattern” as support to design complex learning settings.
Bauer & Baumgartner (2012) also refer to Alexander when they introduce a “pattern
language for working with electronic portfolios in higher education”.
Teaching Management Pattern
(our understanding)
•“Teaching Management Patterns” (TMS) are understood as a set
of abstract descriptions for many or all conceivable scenarios in
an educational setting.
•These patterns are characterized by relevant factors or
conditions. Which factors are relevant generally depends on the
educational sector as well as the specific organizational,
technical, legal, and instructional aspects.
•The objective of the development of the “Teaching Management
Pattern” is to provide a comprehensive regular or intelligible form
of a very large number of variants or cases. The level at which
these “patterns” are located -for example, micro didactics, macro
didactics, or more organizational aspects -can vary.
How we did it
How we did it
•Collected cases
•Discussed all cases concerning which factors are relevant to
favour/recommend the Metacampus or another solution
•We developed illustrations for these „pattern“
•All possible patterns were then ordened in different groups:
•Fitting well for Metacampus
•Fitting, but with effort
•Metacampus compatible, but local infrastructure might be better
•Metacampus compatible, if local infrastructure allows no open badges
•Metacampus incompatible
•Legally impossible pattern
•Of course, everything was iterative and we now present the final
version
Identified relevant factors
•The university of origin of the teacher(s)
•The university of origin of the learner(s)
•Is a university certificate desired and/or an
Open Badge?
•Where are the materials for the course to
be used (e.g., on the LMS of a university)?
Using illustrations
One exemplary pattern
„A lecturer from one partner
university wants to open a course
to participants at other universites.
No certifcates or open badges
wished.“
Sorted patterns
How to use pattern
in counseling
What‘s your pattern?
Need for a (even) simpler way
•Need for a simpler way of presenting
the different information
•Particularly in medicine, decision trees
are frequently used to help physicians
arrive at accurate diagnoses as quickly
and with as few questions as possible
Quick quiz-style decision support
•Integrated in our Metacampus course „How to use Metacampus“
Discussion
Discussion
•Result – esp. the decision tree – looks very
simple
•This result was NOT anticipated (even now,
everyone ask this simple questions …)
•The whole process supported our work to get
such a clearness
•We currently discuss if the Metacampus will be
opened to external people – this will influence
the pattern + decision tree + related counseling
More about our work
in Cm. Digital Campus in Unite!
Acknowledgements
•Contributions of e-learning
and IT experts from partner
universities
•Gratitude to all
collaborators
•Funding from the European
Commission (Erasmus+)
Ebner, M., Schön, S., Alcober, J., Bertonasco, R., Bonani, F.,
Cruz, L., Espadas, C., Filgueira Xavier, V., Franco, M.,
Gasplmayr, K., Giralt, J., Hoppe, C., Koschutnig-Ebner, M.,
Langevin, E., Laurent, R., Leitner, P., Martikainen, J., Matias,
J., Muchitsch, M., Oller, M., Pereira, A.B., Petersson, J.,
Santiano, G., Schmidt, A. da Silva, F.M., Steitz, K., Taraghi,
B., Torchiano, M., Villas, S., Würz, A. (2024). Aligning IT
infrastructures for digital learning amongst the European
university alliance Unite! - The Unite! digital campus
framework and requirements (1.0). Unite! Community 2
Digital Campus, Graz University of
Technology.https://doi.org/10.3217/36yen-0wy21
READ MORE
This presentation
and the report are
available under
CC BY 4.0 International
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