Notes on Contributors
Linda Adler-Kassner
is Professor of Writing Studies, Director of the Center for Innovative Teaching, Research, and Learning, and Associate Dean of Undergraduate Education at University of California Santa Barbara. She has been a writing instructor, programme director, and/or department chair for more than 25 years. Her research focuses broadly on how literacy is defined, valued, taught, and assessed across contexts. She has explored threshold concepts with faculty members on her own campus and many others through a variety of research and consulting projects. Among her publications are two books focusing on threshold concepts co-edited with Elizabeth Wardle: Naming What We Know: Threshold Concepts of Writing Studies (Utah State University Press, 2015) and (Re)Considering What We Know (Utah State University Press, 2019).
Shooq Altamimi
is a writer and a teacher education specialist. Currently working at the Directorate of Training and Development at the Ministry of Education in the Kingdom of Bahrain, she graduated from Bahrain Teachers College, University of Bahrain, with a Bachelor of Education. She received her Master of Arts in English Language Teaching with Distinction in 2016 from Coventry University. She participated in a telecollaboration project with Bogazici University, Turkey and gave several talks with other students and staff regarding her learning experience, MOOCs and Threshold Concepts in Turkey and in the UK. Her research interests include teacher education, threshold concepts, telecollaboration, and autonomous learning. She has published articles on critical thinking as a threshold concept.
Chris Boddey
provides eLearning support to teaching staff across the Avondale College of Higher Education campuses and lectures at the Avondale Business School. Chris has a professional background across primary, secondary and tertiary education in both Queensland and New South Wales. Chris has been involved in supporting educational technology innovation for over thirty years and has utilised his experience in education to capitalise on business opportunities in education throughout his career. He has operated a small business in the education sector for over fifteen years and has twenty years’ experience in school governance. Chris is keenly aware of the challenges associated with the changing face of twenty-first century education in a variety of educational settings. His research interests include: professional development curriculum design and delivery, facilitating authentic blended learning environments and addressing barriers to effective ICT integration in education.
Kerrie Boddey
is a science educator and is currently a sessional lecturer at Avondale College of Higher Education in the Schools of Education and Science and Mathematics. She also teaches a senior chemistry class at a local high school just because she loves it. Kerrie has a keen interest in innovative pedagogical practices that engage students in constructing knowledge and applying this to an online setting for science education. Her research interests include chemistry in nursing education and constructing meaningful learning experiences and augmenting this to an online setting.
Vicki Bruce
has a Bachelor’s degree in Child and Youth Care from the University of Victoria and a Master’s degree in Special Education from the University of Oregon. Vicki has worked with youth in a variety of practice settings – families, foster care, schools, residential and correctional facilities and in street level agencies. Vicki has taught courses in human services, community and school support, child and youth care, and social work at a number of colleges and universities in British Columbia. Vicki keeps her teaching current by providing counselling and organisational development services through her private consulting company.
Allison Carr
is the Academic Transitions Librarian at the University Library at California State University at San Marcos. Her primary focus is working with students in various stages of transition, including first-year and transfer students, and other special populations. Additionally, she works closely with a team of librarians to engage the K12 community through professional development opportunities. Her current research interests focus on using critical pedagogy coupled with the ACRL Information Literacy Framework further develop the student-scholar identity, and helping librarians to continue to develop as critically reflective practitioners. She has a Master of Library and Information Science from San Jose State University.
Barbara Conde Gafaro
obtained a Bachelor Degree in Modern Languages at the Pontificia Javeriana University in Bogota, Colombia. Her thesis was published in the Lingua Xaveriana Journal of the faculty of Communication and Language. Barbara also obtained an online diploma for a course on teaching Spanish as a foreign language at Universidad Externado de Colombia. After working as an English teacher for a year in Colombia, Barbara enrolled on the MA in English Language Teaching and Applied Linguistics at Coventry University, which she completed (with a distinction mark) in 2016 with a dissertation on a blended MOOC integration. She is currently working as a Spanish lecturer at Coventry University while also studying for her PhD on MOOCs for Foreign Language Learning at the Open University, supported by the award of a Leverhulme scholarship. She has published two articles based on her MA dissertation and has presented at national and international conferences.
Susie Cowley-Haselden
is a senior lecturer in English for Academic Purposes (EAP) at the University of Northampton, UK. She is a teacher, a teacher trainer, and the course director for the summer pre-sessional programme. She is a PhD student at Coventry University. Her PhD is an attempt to rid knowledge of its pariah status within the teaching and design of pre-sessionals, arguing knowledge should be brought in from the cold and reside in equal partnership with language. An issue that has been at the heart of her practice and scholarship for the past ten years. She explores this and other issues pertinent to the teaching of English for Academic Purposes at https://theeaparchivist.wordpress.com/
Stuart Crispin
is the Associate Dean Learning and Teaching with the Tasmanian School of Business and Economics at the University of Tasmania and teaches in the areas of marketing, strategy, and entrepreneurship. Stuart has taught undergraduate and postgraduate business units in intensive modes for over ten years. His research focuses on marketing and entrepreneurship education, and value creation in agricultural supply chains.
Jason Davies
(SFHEA) has held various teaching and research roles in UCL’s Arena Centre for Research-based Education since 2003, including multiple roles in an interdisciplinary research project on a UCL-wide Evidence, Inference and Inquiry and being programme director of UCL’s former MA Education. Previously he was a postdoctoral fellow at the Wellcome Trust Centre for the History of Medicine at UCL: he has taught a wide range of courses across UCL over two decades. He currently teaches interdisciplinary courses and is part of the team that supports UCL’s Arena programme for HEA fellowship as well as being a chair of UCL’s Liberating the Curriculum initiative. His abiding interest is in people’s experience of interaction through different knowledge systems. He has published on interdisciplinarity, history of religion and constructions of belief. He is a founder member of the Teaching and Learning Ancient Religion Network (tlarblog.wordpress.com).
Nicole C. Eva
has been a librarian at the University of Lethbridge since receiving her MLIS in August, 2008. She is liaison to the School of Liberal Education, the Dhillon School of Business, and the departments of Economics, Political Science, and Agricultural Studies. She also serves on the groups stewarding Collections and Scholarly Communications for the Library. Past research interests have included information literacy to distance users, technology use in teaching information literacy, and marketing and outreach in academic libraries.
Peter Felten
is a professor of history, assistant provost for teaching and learning, and executive director of the Center for Engaged Learning at Elon University. His books include the co-authored volumes: The Undergraduate Experience: Focusing Institutions on What Matters Most (Jossey-Bass, 2016); Transforming Students: Fulfilling the Promise of Higher Education (Johns Hopkins University Press, 2014); Engaging Students as Partners in Learning and Teaching (Jossey-Bass, 2014); Transformative Conversations (Jossey-Bass, 2013); and the co-edited book Intersectionality in Action (Stylus, 2016). He has served as president of the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (2016–17) and also of the POD Network (2010–2011), the U.S. professional society for educational developers. He is co-editor of the International Journal for Academic Development and a fellow of the John N. Gardner Institute for Excellence in Undergraduate Education.
Kevin P. Gosselin
is the Director of Academics & Biostatistics with the HonorHealth Research Institute in Scottsdale, AZ and an Adjunct Professor at A.T. Still University in Mesa, AZ. He is an experienced leader, educator and researcher with expertise spanning an eclectic array of disciplines. Dr. Gosselin has produced over 100 research abstracts, publications, and presentations with an emphasis on online teaching and design, faculty development and contributions in the health sciences. His research includes projects in psychometric development and evaluation of psychosocial assessment instruments, institutional research focused on online course design and instruction, and faculty development.
Stine Gundrosen
educated as Registered Nurse in Namsos, Norway (1985). She has work-experience from medical, surgical and intensive care wards. The last 20 years, her professional focus has been on education both within the ICU and in the Medical Simulation Centre at the University Hospital and The Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU) in Trondheim, Norway. Her postgraduate education involves specialising in intensive care nursing (1995), teaching (2005) and science (2009). She obtained the Master’s Degree in Health Science at the Faculty of Medicine and Health science, NTNU in Trondheim, August 2009. She is administrative leader of the Medical Simulation Centre in Trondheim, and defended her PhD on communication in interprofessional emergency-teams at NTNU in March 2019.
Phil Hancock
is currently Professor of Accounting and Associate Dean Education in the Faculty of Arts, Business, Law and Education at The University of Western Australia. He is a Fellow of Chartered Accountants Australia and New Zealand, CPA Australia and the Accounting and Finance Association of Australia and New Zealand. He has received more than $700,000 in research grants and has published widely in accounting and accounting education and is an Associate Editor of the Journal of Accounting Education.
Lucy Hatt
is a Senior Lecturer at Newcastle Business School, Northumbria University and leads the Entrepreneurial Business Management programme where students start up and run their own businesses in teams. She is also a Doctoral Researcher at the School of Education, Durham University, researching Entrepreneurship Education through the lens of Threshold Concepts and Transactional Curriculum Inquiry. Following a career in industry and consultancy, Lucy joined Northumbria University in 2009.
Erika Hawkes
is currently Skills Development Manager at the University of Warwick and was previously Researcher Developer at the University of Birmingham. Erika researches and designs skills development activities for students with a particular emphasis on Masters students. Current areas of interest include issues of identity in distance learners, digital writing development, and transitions to postgraduate study for non-traditional students. She is a Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Tekla Hawkins
is an Assistant Professor in the Writing and Language Studies department at the University of Texas Rio Grande Valley, teaching digital rhetoric, composition theory, and queer theory. She gained her PhD in English from the University of Texas at Austin, where she was part of the Digital Writing and Research Lab, and assistant editor for Texas Studies in Literature and Language.
Leif M. Hokstad
is a professor in digital competence in teaching and learning at the Unit of Educational Development at the Norwegian University of Science and Technology (NTNU), and a pedagogical advisor to the Medical Simulation Center. His professional career has gravitated around projects with strong inter-disciplinary components. From 1984–1992 he was a consultant in the Task Force for the Introduction of Computers in Education, under the Norwegian Ministry of Education, in issues regarding the use of computers in education. From 2003–2013 he was the director of the interdisciplinary Program for learning with ICT at NTNU, under the trans-disciplinary Strategic Area ICT at NTNU. His research and publications are in the areas of teaching and learning in technology rich environments, and the study of threshold concepts in serious games, in architecture and medical education. His non-work interests gravitate around American literature in the interwar period, Afro-American literature and all things jazz.
Margaret Kiley’s
research and teaching interests have for many years been related to the education of future researchers. In addition to working in Further/Higher Education in Australia, Indonesia, Malaysia and the UK she has also presented workshops on research education and training in Canada, Ireland, Japan, Myanmar, New Zealand, South Africa, and the USA. Margaret now holds an adjunct position at the Australian National University. In 2017 she received the Australian Council of Graduate Research (ACGR) Award for Excellence in Graduate Research Leadership. A recent publication, with Taylor and Humphrey, is A Handbook for Doctoral Supervisors (2nd ed., 2017, Routledge).
Peter Kilgour
is the Director of the Christian Education Research Centre and a Senior Lecturer in the Faculty of Education, Business and Science at Avondale College of Higher Education. His research areas include teacher education, innovative learning and teaching, assessment in work integrated learning, cultural awareness and mathematics education. He is an educator of 35 years’ experience in four different countries. As a former secondary mathematics teacher, school principal, and school system CEO, he has a passion for innovative learning and has worked to implement this in the higher education setting, in online and on-campus modes. His current teaching responsibilities include multicultural education and professional development for pre-service teachers.
Ray Land
is Emeritus Professor of Higher Education and Emeritus Fellow of University College at Durham University. He has published widely in educational research, including works on academic development, learning technology and quality enhancement, and was co-founder of the Threshold Concepts Framework. He has acted as consultant for the OECD, the European Commission and the British Council and recently conducted projects in Europe, Latin America and India. He has presented on his research in over fifty countries across six continents. He is a Fellow of the Academy of Social Sciences, Fellow of the Royal Society of Arts and Principal Fellow of the Higher Education Academy. He currently holds a Gambrinus Fellowship at Technische Universität, Dortmund.
D. Bruce MacKay
is Coordinator of the Liberal Education programme in the Faculty of Arts & Science at the University of Lethbridge. Although his PhD and Masters degrees are in Religious Studies and his Bachelor’s is in Anthropology, he is drawn most to breadth of perspectives provided by a Liberal Education. His current research is in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning with a focus on threshold concepts and student learning in the first years of University.
Sally A. Male
has the Chair in Engineering Education at The University of Western Australia (UWA). Her research interests are curriculum development, work integrated learning, employability, engineering practice, and gender inclusion. Sally has used threshold concept theory in curriculum development and major research projects. Through workshops and publications, she has introduced numerous educators and researchers to threshold concept theory. At UWA, Sally is the Program Chair for the Engineering Science Foundation. She teaches Electrical & Electronic Engineering Design, and Introduction to Professional Engineering, and oversees the professional engineering practicum. Sally is a Fellow of Engineers Australia; Governance Board Member for Engineering Institute of Technology; Editor-in-Chief, Australasian Journal of Engineering Education; Associate Editor, Journal of Engineering Education; Advisory Council Member, Women in Oil and Gas – Perth; and Executive Committee Member, Women in STEMM Australia. Publications are listed at http://uwa.academia.edu/SallyMale
Catherine McLoughlin
is an Associate Professor with the Faculty of Education at the Australian Catholic University, Canberra. With over 30 years of experience in higher education in Europe, South East Asia, the Middle East, and Australia, she has experience and expertise in a variety of educational settings, with diverse students and across a wide range of global contexts. Catherine’s research focuses on technology enabled pedagogy in higher education, curriculum design, and evidence based-practice in education and teacher professional development. Her current research interests include the use of social networking tools to support learning, teacher education and the centrality of threshold concepts in the design of curricula in higher education.
Yvonne Nalani Meulemans
is the Head of Teaching and Learning at the University Library at California State University at San Marcos. In this role, she leads the University Library’s efforts to engage student-scholars through learning experiences and spaces within and beyond the Library. Her research centers on the use of threshold concept theory to create curriculum that is inherently inclusive of students from groups that have been historically underrepresented in higher education. She has most recently published on pedagogical approaches to reference and research help, librarian identity in collaborative relationships with faculty, and the use of threshold concept theory in first-year seminar courses. She has a Master of Library and Information Science from University of Hawai‘i at Mānoa.
Jan H. F. Meyer
a retired Professor of Education in the School of Civil Engineering at The University of Queensland, is presently an Honorary Professor in the same institution. He proposed the notion of a ‘threshold concept’ at a research project meeting held at the University of Edinburgh in February 2001. This basic notion, initially expressed in two seminal papers, “Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge: Linkages to ways of thinking and practising” (Meyer & Land, 2003) and “Threshold concepts and troublesome knowledge (2): Epistemological considerations and a conceptual framework for teaching and learning” (Meyer & Land, 2005), has attracted much international research endeavour in developing what is referred to in this volume as the Threshold Concepts Framework. Meyer’s current (and immediate past) collaborative, work with Timmermans contributes in both practical and theoretical terms to previously alluded to, but relatively under-researched, aspects of the Framework; namely, the professional development of university teachers and the affective experiences of student learners.
Michael Michell
is an honorary lecturer at the UNSW School of Education where works in the area of languages and literacy education. His doctoral thesis, “Academic engagement and agency in multilingual middle year classrooms” (2012), investigated academic engagement in English as an additional Language, project-based classrooms from a Vygotskian, sociocultural perspective. His research interests are English as an additional language and literacy learning and assessment, student engagement, language teacher education and professional learning, Vygotskian and Cultural Historical Activity Theory (CHAT) and education policy. Previously, he worked as an English as a second language teacher and consultant in the NSW Department of Education leading assessment, curriculum and research projects and policies aimed at improving the educational outcomes of ESL learners. Michael is currently president of the Australian Council of TESOL Associations.
Joan Middendorf
sits at the crossroads of disciplinary scholarship and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) and plays both games. Playing by the educator’s rules, she created a theory of pedagogy with David Pace, Decoding the Disciplines (2004), intended to get good results from the teaching and learning process. Practising on the SoTL playground, she models the theory in cross-disciplinary faculty groups, making adjustments to it, such as in a current NSF-funded study exploring approaches to encourage science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) instructors to adopt evidence-based teaching methods. She has published a practical guide to Decoding the Disciplines, Overcoming Student Learning Bottlenecks: Decode the Critical Thinking of Your Discipline (Stylus, 2018) with Leah Shopkow as well as an investigation into affective learning, “What’s feeling got to do with it? Decoding emotional bottlenecks in the history classroom.” She is an instructional consultant and adjunct professor at Indiana University Bloomington.
Jessie L. Moore
is director of the Center for Engaged Learning (www.CenterForEngagedLearning.org) and professor of professional writing and rhetoric at Elon University. Her scholarship focuses on transfer of learning, multi-institutional scholarship of teaching and learning, the writing lives of university students, and engaged learning pedagogies. She is the co-editor of Excellence in Mentoring Undergraduate Research (with Maureen Vandermaas-Peeler and Paul C. Miller, Council on Undergraduate Research, 2018), Understanding Writing Transfer: Implications for Transformative Student Learning in Higher Education (with Randy Bass, Stylus, 2017), and Critical Transitions: Writing and the Question of Transfer (with Chris Anson, The WAC Clearinghouse and University Press of Colorado, 2016). She has served as the elected Secretary for the Conference on College Composition and Communication (2015–2019) and as U.S. Regional Vice President (2016–2018) for the International Society for the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning.
Shannon Murray
is a professor of Renaissance English literature and a 3M National Teaching Fellow (2001). She is currently the coordinator of the 3M National Teaching Fellows’ programme. She has facilitated UPEI’s Faculty Development Summer Institute on Active Learning since 2002 and gives workshops and talks on threshold concepts, active learning, capstone experiences, and portfolios. Her publications include work on leadership in higher education, on John Bunyan, on adaptation and on early children’s literature. She is currently writing a co-authored book with Lisa Dickson and Jessica Riddell on teaching Shakespeare and is completing a project on the 19th century actress Sarah Siddons.
Maria Northcote
Associate Professor, is the Director of the Centre for Advancement of the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (CASTL) at Avondale College of Higher Education. She is an experienced higher education teacher, leader and researcher and is involved in undergraduate and postgraduate education, and professional development. She was recently appointed a Fellow of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA) in recognition of her service to higher education and her commitment to ongoing professional development in teaching and learning.
Marina Orsini-Jones
is Professor in Education Practice and Associate Head of School (International) in the School of Humanities at Coventry University (UK). Marina is a Principal Fellow and National Teaching Fellow of the Higher Education Academy and has been involved threshold concepts pedagogy since 2003. She obtained her doctorate in 2012 with a dissertation titled: Towards a role-reversal model of action-research-supported threshold concept pedagogy in languages and linguistics. She has contributed to over 100 conferences (including as invited plenary speaker) and has published work on action-research-led curricular innovation, threshold concepts in languages and linguistics, MOOCs, telecollaboration, and digital literacies.
Tanya Pawliuk
has a Masters of Child and Youth Care from the University of Victoria. Tanya’s employment experience includes a focus on adoption, adoption education, attachment, the prevention of violence against women and children, and childhood trauma. She has worked in a variety of practice settings, always utilising play and expressive therapies. Tanya’s research interests include an interprovincial strengthening of the quality and availability of adoption education; the needs of the adoptive family; the caring professional’s experience with compassion, forgiveness, and trust; and Samuel Beckett and Popular Culture.
Torie Quiñonez
is the Arts and Humanities Librarian at the University Library at California State University at San Marcos. In addition to her role as a subject liaison to Humanities subjects and the School of Arts, she works closely with the Academic Transitions Librarian to create curriculum and instructional strategies to support the University’s First-Year Programs. Her research investigates the way first-generation Latinx students experience barriers to the student scholar identity and the use of validation theory and critical pedagogy to craft local interventions. She has a Master of Library and Information Science from Pratt Institute.
Julie Rattray
is Director of Postgraduate Taught Programmes and Associate Professor in Education and Psychology at the School of Education at Durham University. Her research interests include the affective dimensions of learning with a particular focus on liminality and Threshold Concepts. Julie teaches on a range of undergraduate and postgraduate modules that take a psychological approach to teaching and learning. In addition, she contributes to the Postgraduate Certificate in Academic Practice. Julie is a Senior Fellow of the Higher Education Academy.
Matt J. Ravenstahl
is currently an IB Visual Art and Theory of Knowledge teacher in Fairfax County, Virginia. He earned his EdD from Durham University in the UK, with Dr. Julie Rattray, Professor Ray Land and Dr. Demitri Kotsoloka as his supervisors. His research focuses upon Threshold Concepts and interrelationships between the visual art-making process and the navigation of the liminal space. The implications of his research are intended to promote critical engagement with the role of art education in the twenty first century as it pertains to semiotic theory with implications for pedagogy and learning environments. In addition Matt has an extensive background as an exhibiting artist throughout the United States.
Anne Marie Ryan
is a University Teaching Fellow in Earth Sciences at Dalhousie University, where she teaches numerous courses throughout the undergraduate years in addition to serving on graduate student committees. In addition to her earth sciences teaching, Anne Marie introduced and currently leads a Community of Teaching Practice for science faculty, and co-developed a Certificate in Leadership and Communication in Science for senior undergraduates, in which she co-teaches the leadership capstone course. She was the recipient of the Anne Marie McKinnon Educational Leadership Award from the Association of Atlantic Universities (2017), as well as the Dalhousie Alumni Excellence in Teaching Award (2016). Her research includes work on geoethics, threshold concepts in the nature sciences, and visual literacy in the sciences.
Leah Shopkow
sits at the crossroads of disciplinary scholarship and the scholarship of teaching and learning (SoTL) and plays both games. Playing by the medieval historian’s rules, she has written a monograph on medieval historiography and most recently published a translation of the Chronicle of Andres of William of Andres. Hanging out on the SoTL playground, she has recently published “A Tale of Two Thresholds” with Arlene Díaz, which engages with Threshold Concepts theory, and Overcoming Student Learning Bottlenecks: Decode the Critical Thinking of Your Discipline (Stylus, 2018), a how-to manual on Decoding the Disciplines, as second author to Joan Middendorf. She is currently writing a book that involves playing both games at once, a worked example of how historians work with hagiographic sources. Her article, “How Many Sources do I Need,” has won the AHA’s 2018 William and Edwina Gilbert Award. She is a professor of history at Indiana University-Bloomington.
Hans Sterk
is a mathematics lecturer and the vice program director of the Bachelor Applied Mathematics at Eindhoven University of Technology, the Netherlands. He is also involved in the university’s (mathematics) teacher training programme. He received his PhD in mathematics from the Katholieke Universiteit Nijmegen, the Netherlands (presently called Radboud Universiteit) and moved to Eindhoven after stays at Columbia University, the University of Utah, and the Universiteit van Amsterdam. Research-wise he is interested in algebra and geometry, and in mathematics teaching.
Jackie Stokes
has a Bachelor of Social Work from the University of British Columbia, a Masters of Social Work from the University of Northern British Columbia (UNBC), and a Doctorate in Education from Simon Fraser University. She has lived and worked in northern British Columbia for 25 years working in a variety of social work roles including substance use counselling, children’s mental health and in the non-profit sector. She has also been a manager in the Ministry for Children and Families and Northern Health and taught at both UNBC and the College of New Caledonia. Jackie’s research interests are in decision making, particularly in child welfare and substance use, the scholarship of teaching and learning and furthering understanding of the factorial survey methodology of research. Threshold concepts have been instrumental in thinking about her classroom pedagogy, and are now an aspect included in her research and publishing.
Alison M. Thomas
was educated in the UK and began her teaching career there, but emigrated to British Columbia, Canada in 1996. She taught for eight years in the Sociology Department at the University of Victoria, before joining Douglas College, a post-secondary community college in Vancouver, where she teaches courses in Introductory Sociology, Gender, Family, and Research Methods. After spending many years researching in the field of gender, her growing interest in the scholarship of teaching and learning led her to shift focus and undertake research in this domain instead. She first collaborated with colleagues on two interdisciplinary projects (one on group-work and another on study abroad), before discovering the literature on threshold concepts and deciding to apply this framework to explore student learning in her introductory sociology classes, as described in this book. She is currently working on completing the analysis of her research data and publishing its findings.
Rachel Thompson
is Senior Lecturer and Learning and Teaching Fellow at the Office of Medical Education, University of New South Wales, Sydney, Australia. These roles include mentoring and support for faculty teaching staff and convening of the Quality of Medical Practice element of the medical programme. She practises a scholarly approach to teaching, using continuous evaluation and reflection alongside research to improve her curriculum and teaching practice. Her research focusses on the identification, teaching and learning of threshold concepts and numeracy issues in evidence-based practice and medical biostatistics. In October 2019 she was conferred a PhD for research with the UNSW School of Education, thesis entitled: “A Vygotskian exploration of medical students’ critical thinking within threshold concept liminal spaces.”
Anne M. Tierney
is currently assistant professor, Learning and Teaching Academy at Heriot Watt University. Originally a botanist, Anne developed her interest in education at the University of Glasgow, where she taught biology for almost twenty years, followed by five years in the Department of Learning and Teaching Enhancement at Edinburgh Napier University. Anne has been involved in pedagogic research for over a decade; her interests include enquiry-based learning and work-related learning. Her interest in threshold concepts in the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL) were developed during her PhD at Durham University, when she investigated the effect of the Research Excellence Framework on teaching-focused academics, and the implications of the implementation of the Teaching Excellence Framework on UK higher education. Anne reviews for several journals and is on the Advisory Board of the international teaching and learning conference, Improving University Teaching.
Julie A. Timmermans
is a Senior Lecturer at the Higher Education Development Centre, University of Otago, where she is involved in teaching, research, service, and academic development work. Her research and practice weave together threshold concepts, Decoding the Disciplines, and, more recently, wellbeing. She believes that the ideas which cause us intellectual and emotional discomfort might offer the greatest opportunities for development, and that learning is enhanced when environments are designed to allow people to explore the edges of their understanding while being well-supported. Currently, she is especially interested in exploring the affective and ontological dimensions of liminal spaces and is enjoying animated discussions with collaborator Jan Meyer and other colleagues on these topics.
Virginia M. Tucker
is assistant professor at the School of Information, San José State University. Her research and teaching interests are in information retrieval system design, advanced search, and information architecture. Tucker was previously product architect and training manager at Dialog/Thomson (now ProQuest), the physics librarian at Stanford University, and a public law librarian. She has a PhD in information systems from Queensland University of Technology; MLS from University of California at Berkeley; and a BA in music composition from Stanford University.
Elizabeth Wardle
is the Roger & Joyce Howe Distinguished Professor of Written Communication and the Director of the Howe Center for Writing Excellence at Miami University (OH). She was previously department chair and director of writing programmes at the University of Central Florida, and director of writing programmes at University of Dayton. Her research and publications have focused on the nature and purpose of first-year composition, writing programme design, knowledge transfer, and threshold concepts of writing. Her publications include Naming What We Know (Utah State University Press, 2015); Composition, Rhetoric, and Disciplinarity (Utah State University Press, 2018); Writing about Writing (Bedford/St. Martin’s, 2011; 2nd edition, 2014; 3rd edition, 2016); and the forthcoming (Re)Considering What We Know (Utah State University Press, 2019).
Andrea S. Webb
spent a decade as a classroom teacher and department head before returning to higher education as a teacher educator. Her research interests lie in teaching and learning in higher education and she is involved in research projects related to Threshold Concepts, the Scholarship of Teaching and Learning (SoTL), and Social Studies Teacher Education. She works to foster SoTL in higher education through her work on the programme advisory board for the International Program for the Scholarship of Educational Leadership (SoEL): UBC Certificate on Curriculum and Pedagogy in Higher Education and the Board of ISSoTL (VP Canada).
Gina Wisker
Head of University of Brighton’s Centre for Learning & Teaching, Professor of Higher Education & Contemporary Literature, teaches and researches in learning, teaching, postgraduate study supervision and academic writing. She has published 26 books (some edited) and over 140 articles including: The Postgraduate Research Handbook (Palgrave Macmillan, 2001; 2nd ed. 2007); The Good Supervisor (Palgrave Macmillan, 2005, 2012); Getting Published (Palgrave Macmillan, 2015); The Undergraduate Research Handbook (2nd ed, Palgrave Macmillan, 2018). Gina also specialises in contemporary women’s writing, postcolonial, Gothic & popular fictions: Key Concepts in Postcolonial Literature (Palgrave Macmillan, 2007); Horror Fiction: An Introduction (Continuum, 2005); Margaret Atwood, an Introduction to Critical Views of Her Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2012); Contemporary Women’s Gothic Fiction (Palgrave Macmillan, 2016). Gina has supervised 35 PhD students to completion and has examined 47. She chaired the Heads of Education Development Group, SEDA Scholarship & Research committee, the Contemporary Women’s Writing association, and is chief editor of SEDA journal Innovations in Education and Teaching International; dark fantasy online journal, Dissections; and poetry magazine, Spokes. Gina is an HEA Principal Fellow, National Teaching Fellow & SFSEDA.
Brad Wuetherick
is the Executive Director, Learning and Teaching at Dalhousie University. In addition to overseeing the Centre for Learning and Teaching, he is a member of the senior team within the Office of the Provost and VP Academic. Brad is also an Associate Member of the Centre for Higher Education Research and Evaluation at Lancaster University in the UK. In addition to working on threshold concepts, his research includes work on undergraduate research, mentorship, academic development, the scholarship of teaching and learning, and academic analytics.
Bert Zwaneveld
is professor emeritus in mathematics education and computer science education. He graduated in Mathematics with Probability and Mathematical Statistics as major. After teaching mathematics in High School, he moved to the Open Universiteit (of the Netherlands) where he completed his PhD about structuring mathematical knowledge with Knowledge Graphs as tool. His current fields of research interest are teaching mathematical modelling and the history of mathematics education.