This document discusses threshold concepts and curriculum mapping to improve the learner experience. It defines threshold concepts as concepts that are transformative, irreversible, integrative, bounded, and troublesome, but essential for understanding a subject. It suggests identifying threshold concepts within disciplines and mapping them to curriculum can help students master challenging concepts. It also addresses opportunities for libraries to get involved through instruction strategies, understanding student struggles, and improving collaboration across support systems to enhance learning.
21. THRESHOLD CONCEPTS
A threshold concept can be
considered as akin to a
portal, opening up a new and
previously inaccessible way
of thinking about something.
It represents a transformed
way of understanding, or
interpreting, or viewing
something without which the
learner cannot progress.
22. BASIC CHARACTERISTICS
Knowledge that is:
• Transformative
• Irreversible
• Integrative
• Bounded
• Troublesome
23. PHYSICS = heat transfer
M A T H E M A T I C S = l i m i t
CULTURAL STUDIES = signification
LITERATURE = deconstruction
ECONOMICS = opportunity cost
PHILOSOPHY = personhood
27. GENERAL RELATIVITY
QUANTUM MECHANICS
THERMODYNAMICS
RADIATION
GRAVITY
LIGHT
MATTER
28. GENERAL RELATIVITY
QUANTUM MECHANICS
THERMODYNAMICS
RADIATION
GRAVITY
LIGHT
MATTER
29. "By being obsessed with success, students are afraid to
fail, so they are reluctant to take difficult steps to master
new material. Acknowledging that difficulty is a crucial
part of learning could stop a vicious circle in which
difficulty creates feelings of incompetence that in turn
disrupts learning.
-Frederique Autin & Jean-Claude Croizet
32. What are the accelerators and
b a r r i e r s t o k n o w l e d g e ?
33. INTERNAL VIEW
• How can we improve library instruction?
Strategy & Tactics?
• What is difficult? What do we make difficult?
• What don t students know? What don t we know?
34. EXTERNAL VIEW
• How might we improve the learner experience?
• Struggling to learn, struggling to teach.
• Students and faculty are walking on same path
together. Where are we?
74. SUGGESTED READINGS
Hounsell & Entwistle. 2005. Enhancing Teaching-learning
Environments In Undergraduate Courses (UK)
Johnson. 2010. Where Do Good Ideas Come
From: The Natural History of Innovation.
Land, Meyer, & Smith. 2008. Threshold concepts within
the disciplines. Rotterdam: Sense Publishers.
Mezirow. 2009. Transformative learning in practice:
Insights from Community, Workplace, and Education.
Townsend, Brunetti, & Hofer. 2011. Threshold
Concepts and Information Literacy. portal: libraries
and the academy, v. 11 n.3, pp. 853-869.