Presentation for the OEB Conference held in Berlin, December 2017

1. CARPE DIEM COMES OF AGE!
Professor Gilly Salmon
Learning Design for Programmes
Friday 12.00 to 13.15

2. Plan for this session
1. What’s new- Carpe Diem for programmes – the research and development
2. Try it!:
• Talking about ‘Threshhold Knowledge’ on your storyboard.
• Try and ‘rich picture’ for the future
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www.gillysalmon.com/carpe-diem

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5. Threshold knowledge
: the ‘right of passage’
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core concepts that
once understood,
transform
perception of a
subject
Scaffolding knowledge:

6. • Threshold concepts are fundamental understandings that sit at the heart of a
body of knowledge. Students need to 'get' them in order for core disciplinary
knowledge to make sense.
• They are like a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of
thinking.
• They can be challenging, troubling and finally transformative.
• They matter for planning learning to avoid students getting stuck
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Rite of passage…release the jewel! Scaffolding knowledge:

7. Bounded
IntegrativeIrreversibleTroublesome
…counterintuitive to what
the learner already
knows…challenges
preconceived notions.
…often irreversible
once learned. That is,
they are difficult to
unlearn.
…bring together
aspects of the topic
that were previously
seen to be unrelated.
…specialist
terminology that
acquires a meaning in
one subject that would
clash with the
meaning used
everyday.
Transformation
…a transformed way
of thinking,
understanding or
interpreting without
which the learner
cannot progress.
Discursive
…will incorporate an
enhanced and
extended view of the
concept.
Re-constitutive Liminality
…entails a shift in
learner subjectivity.
…difficulty in grasping
results in the learner
in a state of partial
understanding
…mimicry or lack of
authenticity may.
Characteristics of Threshold Concepts
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Scaffolding knowledge:

8. Examples of threshold concepts
• Anthropology- every moment defined by context
• Electrical engineering -theory of conductivity:
• Teacher educator – instruction vs construction
• Economics - opportunity costs
• Physics and Engineering - gravity
• English literature - deconstruction of text analysis
• Law- principles of justice and of ethical practice in
lawyers' roles or perhaps the differences between
‘common law’ and ‘civil law’
• Health: safety & effectiveness through integration
of professionals in patient care
• Tourism: the social, economic, political and
biophysical dimensions of sustainability
• Statistics: expected & probability value
• Organisational Behaviour: systems analysis
• Computer Science: computational logic; data
structures & types
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Scaffolding knowledge:

9. Activity 1:
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Discuss with your neighbours
• Can you think of a ‘threshold concept or moment that resulting in your
pursuing your current profession or disciplines?
• Clues:
• How could it have been built (better) into your programme of study

10. List your threshold concepts
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Developing your
Programme Story
Board V1
Time

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Developing your
Programme Story
Board V2
Add your modules

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Developing your
Programme Story
Board V3
‘Star Gates’
(threshold
concepts)

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22. Exercise 2. Your future programme graduate in their environment
: Diagramming ‘richly’
• Pod exercise designed to
• Enable futures thinking
• Focus on students outcome
• Support your strategic thinking
• Enable the pod to share key ideas and issues around the programme
• Introduce a strong concept of ‘start with the end in mind’
• Provide a big ‘poster’ that will support ‘backward thinking’ to the next exercises
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23. Rich diagrams
• are a compilation of drawings, pictures, symbols and text that represent a
particular situation or issue from the viewpoint(s) of the person or people who
drew them.
• show relationships, connections, influences, cause and effect. subjective
elements such as characteristics as well as points of view, prejudices, spirit
and human nature.
• can both record and evoke insight into a situation.
• are pictorial 'summaries' of the physical, conceptual and emotional aspects of
the situation at a given time.
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25. http://bizdiag.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/rich-pictures-guidelines-for-business.html
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‘Your future’ graduate…

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33. Activity 2 …on your table.
• Start with a vision of a programme graduate in his/her work environment 5
years after graduation
• Choose one of these:
1. Dentist
2. Architect
3. Journalist
4. Entrepreneur
5. Computer scientist
• Draw all the components in that might he/she achieved during study of your
programme that are now in use at work
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34. Creating your rich diagram: your Future Programme Graduate
• Visual Representations:
Choose symbols, scenes or
images that best represent
the situation for you.
• Connections: what
connections do you see
between your pictorial
symbols; note what’s
missing.
• Words: be concise...
• Boundaries:
explore…draw..
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Elements:
• Factual & subjective information.
• People & roles
• Significant values, beliefs and norms
• Structures; parts of the situation that
change relatively slowly over time e.g.
the people, the set-ups, the hierarchies.
• Process within the situation - these are
ongoing activities.
• Consider how the structure and the
processes may be changing for the future
• Include ‘climate’ and ‘environmental’
features (impact on your graduate) .

35. Check list
Programmes should be designed to:
• Be organized around threshold concepts that are tailored to student activities.
• Have effective scaffolding and pacing
• Offer structure, outcomes, and sequence of their learning activities leading to
frequent feedback opportunities
• Assess less, feedback more & higher quality
• Make good choice of ‘blend’
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36. CARPE DIEM LEARNING DESIGN FOR PROGRAMMES:
START WITH THE END IN MIND.

37. “Never doubt the power of a small group of
people to change the world. Nothing else ever
has”.
Margaret Mead
Thanks for Taking Part
“Every society honours its live conformists and
its dead troublemakers“.
Mignon McLaughlin
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“If you don't like change, you're going to like
irrelevance even less”. Eric Shinseki
No budgets or human or harmed in the making of the presentation

38. References and follow up – with thanks
Threshold concepts
• www.ee.ucl.ac.uk/~mflanaga/thresholds.html
• Valuable recent article :Timmermans & Meyer, A framework for working with university
teachers to create and embed ‘Integrated Threshold Concept Knowledge’ (ITCK) in
their practice. International Journal for Academic Development. Published online: 17
Oct 2017
• Currie, G. (2017). Conscious connections: Phenomenology and decoding the
disciplines. New Directions for Teaching and Learning, 150, 37–48
Rich pictures & soft systems
• http://bizdiag.blogspot.com.au/2011/08/rich-pictures-guidelines-for-business.html
• http://inscriptdesign.com/rich-pictures/
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