One way to develop effective online courses is the use of learning design patterns, since patterns capture successful solutions. Pedagogical patterns are commonly created by human cognitive processing in "writer's workshops". We explore two ideas; first whether IMS Learning Design is suitable for detecting patterns in existing courses and secondly whether the use of inductive analyses is a suitable approach. We expect patterns to occur in the method section of a learning design, because here the process of teaching and learning is defined. We provide some suggestions for inductive techniques that could be applied to existing learning designs in order to detect patterns and discuss how the patterns could be used to create new learning designs. None of the suggested approaches are validated yet, but are intended as input for the ongoing discussion on patterns.