A major threshold concept

Over coffee this morning, Peter, Juliet and I were discussing last night's TV; so of course we talked about Horizon on gravity. Peter pointed out that "spacetime" (clearly all one word and sometimes referred to as "the spacetime"), is clearly a threshold concept—and troublesome knowledge—for understanding post-Newtonian physics.

How did the programme do in getting over this critical idea? Do respond!

You can watch the whole programme again for the next six days, or download it and keep it for a month, from the link.

Schadenfreude

Or "hoist with one's own petard"? Dear Chris Woodhead's department at the U of Buckingham has been inspected by Ofsted (hardly worth the effort, with three students...) and got a grade 3!

"Schadenfreude"

(The opposite is "Erfolgstraurigkeit"!)

The Periodic Table as a threshold concept

Having had a discussion last week about the periodic table as a threshold concept in chemistry--which I am sure it must be... Well, that's a lame excuse for publishing this link to an animated version of Tom Lehrer's marvellous setting of "The Elements" (which I will also note on one of my least-visited pages). You will need your speakers on.

Evaluation data for last Saturday

You can now download the basic data from last Saturday's Study Day, in Acrobat format. We hope to undertake more detailed processing shortly. Thanks for the 178 questionnaires returned.

A strange and anomalous result!

You can't please all of the people all of the time? That may indeed be true, but it appears that the two Study Days for Year 2 students have significantly bucked the trend. At the moment we have not yet formally processed the evaluation questionnaires, but the staff review after the event suggested strongly that;

• you found the Study Days useful and stimulating,
• and the theme was helpful--even if you did not stick to it!

Many thanks for your enthusiastic participation and the really positive feel you brought to the proceedings on both days! Do look on BREO for the follow-up material and discussions, and many thanks too to those of you who are posting there.

Clip on Classroom Management

At a recent tutors' meeting, several people mentioned that they had found the following clip to be a useful resource for the discussion of class management;

Health and Safety--a threshold concept?

As we get closer to the second Study Day for second year students, I've posted a short paper offering one answer to the question whether Health and Safety is a threshold concept. I rather surprised myself with the outcome. Given that some Interest Groups have decided to take this topic, I hope you'll find it interesting and it gets you back in the groove for discussing TCs.

Looking forward to seeing you again!