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The use of patterns in e-learning is being recently proposed with different purposes and scopes. This paper provides a unifying view of several representative proposals in order to situate and introduce the types of patterns that can be used for generating collaboration scripts that are suitable of being computationally represented and interpreted by learning management systems (LMSs). The paper also presents a hierarchical structure that relates these patterns according to their focus and granularity. The structure shows how the different types of patterns are complementary and should be considered in the process of creating a script. In addition to authoring tools and LMSs, there are other types of tools in which the application of patterns may be useful. This paper points out these tools locating them along the "life cycle" of the scripts