Francisca Perez Salgado, Bert Zwaneveld and Gé Nielissen We present the design, the set-up, and results of research of which difficult or special physics concepts students of environmental sciences identify as threshold concepts, in the physics course for environmental sciences of their undergraduate e-learning programme. More specifically, which characterizations –, transformativity, irreversibility, integrativity, counter-intuitivity, and … Continue reading Threshold concepts in a physics course for students of environmental sciences →

Virna Rossi One of the main issues in designing creative courses is ‘measurability’: in creative education important outcomes involve the development of intuition, inventiveness, imagination, visualisation, risk-taking, which are not easily measured. Another issue is to do with the ‘spiral nature’ of learning in creative courses: outcomes are not achieved/addressed once and for all. Rather, … Continue reading The case for using Threshold Concepts for Learning Design in Creative Education →

Bjørn Otto Braaten and Leif Martin Hokstad This presentation addresses the sparsely researched link in architectural education between students’ experience of liminality and their design work. The trajectory from layperson to an identity as architect student is for many a challenging journey of negotiating existential questions and personal transformation (Cuff 1991, Thompson 2019). Through a … Continue reading Spatial response to liminality in first semester architect student’s design work. →

Lucy Hatt and Julie Rattray The inclusion of students as research participants in the identification of threshold concepts is controversial. There is an inherent contradiction and methodological challenge regarding the involvement of student participants in the gathering of valid and reliable perspectives in curriculum inquiry. Students do not know what they do not know, and … Continue reading Bringing the student voice into threshold concept research – concept mapping in curriculum development →

Matthew Dunn and Jenny Wynn Significant changes to the delivery and assessment methods of A-level specifications in schools in England have introduced increasing levels of difficulty (CIFE, 2018), making what is already a difficult transition from GCSE to A-level study even more acute. Recent investigations into students’ journeys highlighted the cognitive and affective discomfort brought … Continue reading Threshold Connections: employing the Threshold Concept Framework to impact on classroom practice in secondary schools through collaborative research →

Diane Boyd A recent Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) study at a small, private liberal arts university in the southern United States sought to determine the degree to which faculty burnout might be addressed by learning in community via a “New-to-SoTL” community of practice (CoP) that explored SoTL in Action: Illuminating Critical Moments of … Continue reading Embracing Liminality: Tools for Negotiating Identity Shift in New-to-SoTL Colleagues →

Sara Miller and Craig Gibson (Chair's error: the first few minutes of this was not recorded by accident). A threshold concepts framework in tandem with curricular design models provides the basis for cross-disciplinary curricular development in information literacy. This paper presents a prototype curriculum for an online short course for disciplinary faculty and librarians based … Continue reading Creating Networks of Practice through an Online Short Course →

David Reeping The conference themes invite the community to reflect on the proliferation of work on threshold concepts and consider how the framework has been applied in practice. Accordingly, this paper presentation addresses the state of research designs in studying threshold concepts across the disciplines and offers strategies to engage their data in potentially unexpected … Continue reading Mixed Methods Strategies for Handling Methodological Issues within Threshold Concept Features →

Rachel Yoho (Unfortunately the speaker was unavailable due to a hurricane for this talk). The concept of One Health, focused on understanding the complexities as related to aligned approaches to human, animal, plant, and environmental health, is a burgeoning field of study for research and practice. However, less is understood in terms of these multiple … Continue reading Mapping core and threshold concepts across the interdisciplinary fields of One Health →

Virginia M. Tucker and Michelle Holschuh Simmons The authors previously presented preliminary findings from their research using the threshold concepts framework to understand dispositional readiness in the field of teaching (Seventh Biennial Threshold Concepts Conference, 2018). Session attendees demonstrated considerable interest in our methodology of collaborative thematic analysis, informed by grounded theory. For this presentation, … Continue reading Vital but not thresholds: Differentiating professional domain essentials and threshold knowledge →