How can digital media enhance students' mastery of threshold concepts?

Abstract

Mastery of threshold concepts is driven by students’ expanding knowledge and experience. Threshold concepts cannot be taught via the simple transfer of knowledge, but instead ‘emerge’ for students via experience, conceptualisation and self-development (Meyer and Land, 2005). This can happen at different stages via different means and students may enter a liminal state whereby they oscillate between states of understanding and being (Cousin, 2006; Meyer and Land 2005). Teaching and re-teaching threshold concepts at set points adds to the teaching load and may not be an effective way to support students’ mastery on what is a messy, unpredictable and personal journey.

The persistence of learning resources in the online space means that students can drive their own learning and development by visiting and revisiting interactive digital resources that demonstrate conceptually difficult or contradictory knowledge. Such troublesome knowledge is a feature of many fields of engineering. The transformative power of digital media can take students outside of the classroom and immerse them in other worlds.

By taking a focussed approach in this project, we will explore what transformative and troublesome knowledge means in the literature, and to a select group of students and staff at WMG. Using the findings, we will then propose digital media solutions informed by multiple perspectives.