# data[].attributes.body
article cited:
http://elib.mi.sanu.ac.rs/files/journals/tm/23/tm1221.pdf

Outcomes: Alverno College:
http://www.learningoutcomesassessment.org/documents/AlvernoCaseStudy.pdf

Reflective writing: Jennifer Moon
http://www.cetl.org.uk/UserFiles/File/reflective-writing-project/ThePark.pdf

# data[].attributes.headline
Highest goal: let programme students see historical depth (here, applied to Italian culture); appreciate the distance from one's world

# data[].attributes.subject
Highest goal: let programme students see historical depth (here, applied to Italian culture); appreciate the distance from one's world

# data[].attributes.body
Learning outcomes are subordinate  to this goal: what learning outcomes best suit the strategic goal?

Before articulating outcomes, 'needs' should be identified more clearly. A need is logically negative: 'X  is not there and it should be'.

First try at articulating needs: 2yr students in an Arts curriculum have no tools to go beyond a 'visible cultural universe' expressed in one language, one civilization (material/non-material culture), one set of tacit assumptions and expectations and values. Can one module remedy that? of course not. But it could burst the bubble and reveal that there IS something else out there.

2nd try (zoom in, narrower focus): students can't see the differences between their world and the pre-modern one unless they're made explicit. No nation-states; no voting, welfare, policing, schooling - local solutions (overlord, church, family ...) for all of these basic needs; subsistence farming beside manufacture, commercial exchanges, and a few highly specialized professions; mass illiteracy; language of written culture possibly very different from language of everyday use, and accessible to the few because it requires long specialized training.

3rd try: ideally, students would need to be shown something that convinces  them of the differences between then and now (= become aware of cultural depth, of continuity and change) without extensive preparatory training - ie without having to read much in the original, and to be trained for that. My experience is that just telling them that things were different doesn't work. An awareness of cultural depth is not a propositional content which could be simply stated: it must be experienced.

(an embryo of a new approach: reduce the stating of facts, increase the exposing to cultural stimuli; the challenge lies in assessing.)
(doesn't this lead quite naturally to task-based PBL?)

Pitfall: the exx of PBL I've seen (so far) transfer the academic questions inside the student's everyday world (eg PR for the Globe Theatre, ad aimed at teenagers - today's teenagers?). So no direct inspiration is possible.

Answer (tentative, 27/9): what must be operationalized by students are the ways to know - not what.
Concretely: 'compile a report on ___', 'set up an introductory course in ___', or 'identify the sources for a report on ___' (the latter focuses more on the preliminary decisions about what must be relevant). The '___' must be carefully chosen to make inevitable an appreciation of what is different from today's cultural environment (the 'compare and contrast' task, only implied, not stated, and turned into a means of investigation).

My (nebulous) understating of 'threshold concept' points to an obvious candidate: diglossia. Not intuitive, inevitably leads to a new approach on the information acquired about language use, hopefully irreversible. Above all, indispensable for going beyond a naive (and wrong) view of languages and social groups. Ticks all the boxes really:
http://edutechwiki.unige.ch/en/Threshold_concept
https://www.dkit.ie/system/files/Threshold_Concepts__and_Troublesome_Knowledge_by_Professor_Ray_Land_0.pdf