presentation for iaa - oxford careers service 24 november 2015

Anne Adams

Threshold Concepts

Gill Clough, Elizabeth

Hartnet, Natalie

Egglestone, Elizabeth

Fitzgerald, Eileen

Scanlon, Mike Sharples,

Dorothy

Practice based Tricky Topics

Schools in Germany,

Sweden, Portugal,

Spain & UK

BARRIERS to LEARNING

• What are the learning gaps for individual

students?

• Why do students (and their teachers) think

they’ve learnt something BUT they fail in the

exam?

• How do we engage students in difficult

learning when they find it hard to learn a

topic?

BARRIERS to TEACHING

• Experienced teachers know ‘tricky topics’ for

students – but not necessarily ‘WHY’ a TT

• I DON’T UNDERSTAND WHY THEY DON’T

UNDERSTAND

• How to motivate and engage + progress

understanding

Image: imgarcade.com

Mimicry

• Mimicry is one possible outcome of liminality

• Example: When asked to put a rule (Thévenin’stheorem) into words, students wrote down an equation rather than a sentence suggests that students lack understanding; only memorization (Harlow, 2011)

• Therefore important to support DEEP learning of a concept

• But not all concepts difficult to learn or teach -which concepts ?

‘SURFACE’ and ‘DEEP’ Learning

• Surface learning:

– skimming, memorising, regurgitating

– SKATING on the surface of understanding

• Deep learning:

– relating new knowledge to existing understanding

– changes how we think

– other knowledge is built on the ‘foundations’ of this

learning

Threshold Concepts

Meyer and Land (2003, 2006)

• Central gatekeeping concept• “something without which the learner cannot progress”

• “akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously

inaccessible way of thinking about something”

• Lightbulb moments• “It represents a transformed way of understanding, or

interpreting”

• Troublesome knowledge• often Counter-intuitive

Features of a Threshold ConceptA threshold concept (TC) is likely to be:

• Transformative– once understood, can cause a shift in the perception of a subject

sometimes it even transform identity

• Irreversible– it is unlikely that a TC is forgotten or unlearned once acquired due to

transformation

• Integrative– a TC can expose “the previously hidden interrelatedness of something”

• Bounded–a TC has borders with other TCs; helps to define disciplinary areas

• Troublesome– may be counterintuitive (common sense understanding vs. expert

understanding)

Tricky Topic

ToolWHAT

– Identify tricky topic (e.g. Moles)

– Break down into stumbling blocks (e.g.Tritation, Particles)

HOW

– Describe students problems (description for intervention)

– Linked to one or many stumbling blocks (links)

WHY

– Problem Distiller supports unpicking ‘why’

– TTT support creating quiz

– TTT quiz visualisation

– Student / Teachers’ gaps

– Intervention testing

Creative Juxtaposed Learning

Comparative,

transformative learning

(scaffolded video making)

Tricky Topic Tool Video

• https://vimeo.com/146707171

Tricky Topic

Tool

Highskillz (Ed Tech

Company)

Developing scalable

tricky topic tool

Evidence Based Policing• Innovative Research evidence

– witness interviewing, community

engagement, cybercrime,

• Practice need interventions

– Practice training needs:

– Types of learning intervention: Informal to formal learning, Games based

– Change management: champions, evidence cafes, technology pathways

(Sgt Met Police)

National Centre for Policing Research and

Professional Development

Other

Applications

Higher Education Sector

• OU is largest academic institution in the UK • >1.8 million students since 1969

• 200,000 current students (Inc. >15,000 overseas)

• regarded as Britain’s major e-learning institution

• In National Student Survey• OU received overall satisfaction rating of 90%

• OU was 1 of only 3 HEIs to consistently score 90% or

above every year since 2007

• REF: 72% OU research rated 4 or 3 star

Higher Education Sector

• 41 year partnership with the BBC

• World leader in developing technology to

increase global access to education with vast

open content portfolio including:• free study units on OpenLearn, which received 5.2

million unique visitors in 2012/13

• materials on iTunes U, which has recorded more than

66 million downloads

We Need

• Face to Face HE Teaching

– Swedish & Spanish University trials [URJC, LNU: computing and

research methods] SUCCESSFUL

– Tutorials & supporting OU learning design

• Input from university with high-quality f2f teaching

expertise

- OXFORD UNIVERSITY

References• Meyer, J. & Land, R. (2003) Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge:

linkages to ways of thinking and practising within the disciplines. In Rust, C. (Ed.)

Improving student Learning - Theory and Practice Ten Years on. Oxford, Oxford

Centre for Staff and Learning Development (OCSLD), pp.412-424

• Meyer, J. & Land, R. (2006) Overcoming barriers to student understanding:

Threshold concepts and Troublesome Knowledge. In Meyer, J. & Land, R. (Eds.)

Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding: Threshold concepts and

Toublesome Knowledge. London and New York, Routledge, pp.19-32

• Gentner, D. & Stevens, A. L. (1983) Mental models, Psychology Press.

• Johnson-Laird, P. N. (1983) Mental models: Towards a cognitive science of

language, inference, and consciousness, Harvard University Press.

• Eckerdal, A., McCartney, R., Mostrom, J. E., Ratcliffe, M., Sanders, K. & Zander, C.

(2006) Putting Threshold Concepts into Context in Computer Science Education. IN

Taoufik, A. (Ed.) 3 ed., Association for Computing Machinery.

• Rowbottom, D. (2007) Demystifying Threshold Concepts. Journal of Philosophy of

Education, (Vol. 41, 2), pp. 236-270

Anne Adams & Gill Clough

The Open University

Research Associate JuxtaLearn - IET

anne.adams@open.ac.uk

gill.clough@open.ac.uk

Thank You

ADDITIONAL

SLIDES

Juxtalearn

Process

SURFACE and DEEP

LEARNING

Deep and Surface

Learning• Surface learning

– Easy to acquire facts

• Deep learning – Reviewing misconceptions

Deep Learning Teaching methods Related JuxtaLearn stages

Bringing out the structure of the subject Stage 1, Identify: Relating tricky topics to stumbling blocks

Concentrating on and ensuring plenty of time for key concepts Stage 2, Demonstrate: Through Flipped learning and students

creating their own conceptual representations

Confronting students' misconceptions. Throughout all stages

Using assessments that require thought, and requires ideas to

be used together.

Stage 3, Interpret: Tricky topic and stumbling block directed testing

Relating new material to what students already know and

understand.

Stage 4, Perform: Subject tricky topics & stumbling block testing

(subject relations) creative film-making (real world understanding)

Engaging students in active learning. Stage 4, Perform & Stage 5, Compose: creative film-making

Allowing students to make mistakes without penalty and

rewarding effort.

Stage 4, Perform & Stage 5, Compose: creative film-making

[adapted from Biggs (1999) & Entwistle (1988) for JxL methods]

TARGETING interventions for ‘tricky topics’

& ‘deep learning’

• Approaches to Learning (deep, surface,

achieving) important

• Standardised questionnaire used across world

– largest cohorts across Australia.

• Surface & Deep motives and strategies

– Motives: approach & motivation of student to learning

– Strategies: ways of dealing with learning

• Achieving (motives and strategies)

– Motives – competitiveness

– Strategies – strategic management of learning ‘getting

equipment ready to learn’

TARGETING interventions for ‘tricky topics’

& ‘deep learning’

• Identifying ‘tricky topics’,

• Support to create quizzes

• Feedback to students AND teachers on ‘gaps’

• Approaches to Study important – quiz

completed

Diagnostic Quiz• Taxonomy and Example Student Problems linked to

Stumbling Blocks scaffold question construction

Selecting a Stumbling Block

displays Example Student

Problem and Taxonomy

choices

Top BUN of the

burger• Support for identifying students problems

Taxonomy tool prompts

teacher to reflect on

underlying cause of

student problem

JxL supports quiz

authoring• Supports constructing ‘tricky’ questions in a quiz

• Identifying surface and deep understanding

Surface Learning

EXAMPLE• Yr 7 Maths –know division, problems beyond

• Create a Juxtaposed story to explain this to other

students trying to do the quiz you just did.

• For ‘division’ for example, with characters to

represent numbers and symbols (divide, equals)

• It must have a beginning a middle and an end.

• “I know division, EASY”

BUT… during JUXTALEARN StoryMaking ……..

Surface Learning

EXAMPLE• They realised …. They didn’t fully understand

• 11 people representing 11

• 4 mushrooms representing 4

• Monster they have to fight by dividing up 4

mushrooms … with 3 people who can’t fight.

• Teacher spotted and did immediate targeted

support, to help them gain ‘deep learning’!

4 11 = 2 remainder 3

LIGHTBULB MOMENT !!!

Surface to Deep

Understanding• Immediate feedback – comfortable in using

methods:

“I could do the bus-stop method but I didn’t like to do

it all the time, but now I’m happy to do it more often.”

“Same for me, I’ve just done it twice in that test when

I used to just do it in my head”

Engagement

• we understand our problems:

“Sir knows the stuff but we know what other kids

don’t understand.”

“Yeh the ‘mushroom maths’ was great it was

something we’d get”

“We get bored of doing test, after test, after test”

FINDINGS: Meat of

assessment• Question difficulty / deep learning

“When we did questions, when we were doing it out

of the book, [...] and I was completely understanding

some of the questions […] but I did a question on the

quiz and I had to, like do it, apply it differently, and

then I got it wrong”. (Chem4)

• Identifying gaps in understanding

“Some questions were very easy but some were very

hard and I had to guess them.” (SRAMath3)

FINDINGS: Value

of Visualised

Feedback• “I think it was useful for a snapshot view of the

group”. (ChemistryTeacher1)

FINDINGS:

Assessment prior

to and after JxL

intervention

Chemistry Group Clipit ID Pre Quiz Post Quiz

Group1 Chem1 5/10 50% 6/10 60%

Chem2 4/10 40% 7/10 70%

Chem6 5/10 50% 5/10 50%

Chem7 7/10 70% 8/10 80%

Group2 Chem5 3/10 30% 7/10 70%

Chem3 5/10 50% 9/10 90%

Chem8 4/10 40% 5/10 50%

Chem4 2/10 20% 3/10 50%

FINDINGS: quiz

visualisation feedback• Applied to on-going teaching practice:

Peer Learning: “It makes me go maybe that

student could teach that student and try and

unpack their learning and then help these ones

out as well. This makes me think the intervention

could be with them.” (ChemistryTeacher1)

Teacher Intervention: ‘But this [gas volume

calculations] has to be a bit more me. I've then

got to go look at it again and go, what is it about

that ... it could be me... possibly re-teaching it

again could be useful. (ChemistryTeacher1)

Hertfordshire school ‘extra

maths intervention’

tricky topic results

0

5

10

15

20

25

30

Student1 Student2 Student3 Student4 Student5 Student6 Student7

Surface Motive

Surface Strategy

Deep Motive

Deep Strategy

Achieving Motive

Achieving Strategy

Deep motive /

surface strategy

Deep motive and strategy

Deep and Surface Learning

(initial results)

[adapted from Biggs (1999) & Entwistle (1988) for JxL methods]

Class overview