Threshold Concepts: Perspectives from Computer Science
Two specific projects from the 'Rainbow Group' of the University of Cambridge Computer Laboratory, led by Prof Peter Robinson, offer particular insights into the area of threshold concepts and ‘conceptual change teaching’ as the basis of research into learning across domains, and potential foundations for teaching and learning environments informed by better understanding of learners and learning.
The Intelligent Verilog Compiler (IVC) Project (Moore and Taylor, 2005) teaches the Verilog Hardware Description Language (HDL) in the second year undergraduate course at Cambridge. It is ‘intelligent’ in two ways: it helps check the syntax and the semantics of the learner's program and it finds a suitable technical or English definition, comparison or example in order to 'scaffold' learning without directly providing the answer. Current work (Taylor and Moore, 2006) allows the learner to ask questions in English to provide a simple conversation that mimics the interaction between a novice and an expert human monitoring deep and surface learning.
'Intelligent Books’ (Billingsley and Robinson, 2005) include learning activities where learners are able to work with diagrams and written forms that resemble what they might be expected to draw or write on paper as they build their answers. Proof questions are hard because there is no single taught process to solve an arbitrary number theory proof question, and initially students are working on an unfamiliar topic in an unfamiliar notation. The Discrete Mathematics Intelligent Book allows learners to manipulate onscreen tiles containing arbitrary written mathematical notation to build up the structure of a proof, with assistance from the Book.
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