Design Patterns applied to the organization of learning object repositories

The development of online teaching and learning initiatives requires a complex combination of skills and experience from a variety of professional fields. There are a number of issues, at both an individual and organizational level, associated with the existing development of online teaching and learning materials. These issues are contributing factors to why many current examples of online teaching and learning fail to meet the early expectations of the initiative. A pattern is "a generic approach to solve a particular problem that can be tailored to specific cases". Properly used, they can save time and improve quality. The present work focuses on describing e-learning initiatives developed by the Centre for Excellence in design, development and use of learning objects (CETL) based in the University of Cambridge, in order to propose an approach of design pattern gathering together experiences and facilitating the implantation of this kind of projects in other situations or contexts.