Moving beyond the threshold: A TLRI final report 2014–16
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- Last edited 13 days ago by Peter Riegler
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Abstract
Moving beyond the threshold set out to interrogate what it means to think historically in the digital age (Tredinnick, 2013). How do university students and teachers use digital media to transform learning experiences? Do digital approaches present novel ways to engage with key historical concepts? Answers to these questions continue to be important and urgent; large-scale investment in educational resources and technology is based on the assumption that current and future students are or will become digitally literate, and that they know how to use digital media effectively and efficiently in inquiry-led and autonomous learning. There is little evidence to prove, however, that the so-called ‘net generation’(Schulmeister, 2015; Tapscott, 1998) grasp the disciplinary threshold concepts of historical thinking, attain successful learning outcomes through technology-mediated teaching, or achieve the key competencies of critical and creative thinking and citizenship that prepare them for future employment and social engagement. Teachers of history-informed subjects need robust research data and evidence of effective practices to understand and advance the relationship between digital technologies, curriculum planning, and historical thinking in order to effectively integrate digital literacies into the curriculum and to accurately evaluate their impact on student learning. Such evidence can be used to inform public policy about future funding strategies for digital learning practices at universities, and address gaps in students’ access to resources by demographic, subject matter, ethnicity, and gender. This Teaching and Learning Research Initiative (TLRI) final report tells the story of how a project that combined threshold concepts, historical thinking, and digital technology became, in the process, an investigation into academic identity and the ontological challenges of what Vaughan et al.(2015) have termed ‘threshold experiences’.
Bibliographic data
Shep, S. J. (2017). Moving Beyond the Threshold: A TLRI Final Report 2014-16. Teaching & Learning Research Initiative