Project Aims and Objectives
Project Aims
The overall aims of the project are as follows:
- The establishment of an interdisciplinary network (including representatives from education, computer science, psychology and a range of subject domains) to explore perspectives on the teaching and learning of threshold concepts across a number of disciplines. This activity would extend activities already underway in a number of projects at Cambridge, and will also complement work currently being coordinated at the Universities of Strathclyde and Durham on threshold concepts in the disciplines.
- exploration of opportunities offered by a range of technologies (including, but not limited to, the adaptive intelligent tutoring systems being researched and developed at the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory) to support the teaching and learning of threshold concepts across a range of disciplines.
Project Objectives
Specific objectives include:
- A review of literatures related to threshold concepts across disciplines in order to identify common elements and discipline-specific research, conceptual frameworks and case studies.
- organisation of a series of practitioner seminars to define the nature and role of threshold concepts in a range of disciplines and teacher and student perspectives on teaching and learning threshold concepts (Seminar Series A).
- construction of a series of case studies of teaching and learning threshold concepts in the disciplines based on the work of participants in Seminar Series A and data collected during seminars. You can see these here.
- organisation of a series of multi-institutional interdisciplinary seminars to explore areas of commonality and difference in conceptual models, ontologies and methodologies related to threshold concepts, and develop interdisciplinary approaches to further research (Seminar Series B). These seminars will bring together participants in Seminar Series A with representative from a range of other disciplines.
- establishment and management of an online environment to support work in both seminar series and to allow links to be established across seminar series, as well as to provide a location for interdisciplinary activities between seminars.
- The production of a research report providing an overview of interdisciplinary perspectives on threshold concepts, and of emerging and potential interdisciplinary research and development activities. This would be the first step towards the production of a set of peer-reviewed research papers for publication, potentially in a special edition of an appropriate academic journal.
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