Carpe Diem

LSTM’s experience at Gilly Salmon’s staff dev session at Liverpool University

This Wed I attended a one-day curriculum redesign workshop led by Gilly Salmon – unpacking her 18yrs of research into effective online learning activities. Below I outline the the structure of the day with the aim of giving TEL departments a specific example of one of these days so that they might be better informed about running their own.

Context

There were four delegates – two from Liverpool and two (inc. me) from LSTM. We worked in our teams to redesign one of our modules. We chose Hazards in Travel Health – a 4-week online course aimed at an international audience of health professionals.

Introduction (30m)

Usual intro stuff – 2-3 mins introducing ourselves and the unit we bought to redesign. Then Gilly & facilitators unpacked the structure of the day, and Gilly’s research that led to the well honed Carpe Diem process including the e-tivity framework.

Interview (40m)

This was a very useful exercise – and well placed as a first activity. We were asked to imagine ourselves in 10yrs time at an event awarding our module a prestigious teaching and learning award. This allowed us to explore our understanding of what makes an effective learning environment in the context of our module. We suggested some of the reasons for the success of our module was having a student-centred approach that:

• Used the 5-stage model to facilitate us taking students from 1-Access to 5-Development;
• Build a ‘Community of Practice’ for each cohort – via informed farming of discussion boards (inc direct contact with individuals), plus web conferencing that encouraged a ‘Social Presence’;
• Activities tightly aligned to the course aims and assessment criteria.

We didn’t mention e-tivities as these were off our radar at the time.

Mission statement (40m)

We spent around 30m generating a sentence trying to encapsulate our desired aim and ethos. Gilly suggested we avoid using words like ‘Expert’ as this may discourage continuous learning (giving the impression that one can ‘down tools’ on course completion).

Curriculum Map (1.5hr)

This was the main activity, and along with e-tivities (below), perhaps the most useful part of the day. The map aims to give an overview of the course. Gilly suggested we add a couple of weeks ‘mop up’ to allow those unable to keep up to complete. We also introduced a week 0 that was aimed at addressing the first stage of the model, ‘Access and motivation’. John said we should avoid being ‘content driven’ and work backwards from learning outcomes instead. However, we got rather cosy with content and split the six topics of the first three weeks, leaving week 4 as a supportive assessment production week. Here’s what we ended up with:

Key:

• Deep pink – content
• Blue – activity
• Green – Assessment
• Yellow f2f activities (inc webinar).

The map encouraged us to design activities (blue) that moved from a gentle introduction through to engagement and collaboration. So in Week 1, we had a whole group activity to suggest some risks from the students’ environments and post these to a discussion board, through to week 4 where we ask students to post drafts of their summative assessment and offer a critique to colleagues.

Looking in detail at week 2:

… the first activity (in blue) is to identify and post travel risks to the discussion forum and note what others have posted. The second is to expand on the effects of two diseases and create a leaflet aimed at health professionals

We also identified formative assessment tasks for each week, and in Wk 2 suggest that commenting on others SoPs and leaflets would be a good method to get some peer review.

Finally, every week we’re suggesting a face to face session via a webinar (optional – recorded) that the tutor leads to recap on the week’s activities, learning outcomes addressed, and introduce the next week.

Notice that the stages of the model are in red over relevant weeks – encouraging us to consider where the students were likely to be on the model when designing an activity. It also helped us ensure students were encouraged moving up through the stages.

e-tivities (1hr)

Along with the map, this was the most useful part of the day – expanding on one of the suggested activities to produce a detailed ‘e-tivity’. We chose to look at the professional leaflet – activity 2.2. Note the suggestion to number activities so it’s clear where they’re from / leading to.

We linked to the summative assessment by stating the leaflet is a resource that will feed into the final assessment.

The ‘Spark’ was a difficult concept at first – we settled on watching a contemporary article / report / video outlining concerns around one or two diseases.

The e-tivity template encouraged us to state how long students should look at each activity, and how staff should intervene / engage.

Action Plan (30m)

This activity forced us to commit to our next steps. For me, one was to create a blog post about the day – hence this blog.

Overall

An extremely useful, thought provoking, interesting, and enjoyable day. TEL departments should be encouraged to adapt to their environments and see if they can get groups of similar or disparate academics to go through the Carpe Diem process – especially if they are looking at a Blended or Fully Online course.  

David Callaghan

Senior Educational Technologist Technology Enhanced Learning Unit 0151 702 9385 David.Callaghan@lstmed.ac.uk