Research interests Teaching and Learning Concepts Impedance Spectroscopy Biosensor Modelling Object-oriented programming in science and engineering Michael Thomas Flanagan's Java Scientific Library Personal details Contact information

Teaching Teaching and Learning Concepts Nanotechnology and Healthcare (MSc in Nanotechnology) On-line Support for Object Oriented Programming Courses Useful links The Threshold Concept: a brief introduction and bibliography The Higher Education Academy (HEA) Engineering Subject Centre The Higher Education Academy (HEA) Information and Computer Sciences Subject Centre Abbreviations and Acronyms used in Higher Education Research and Engineering Education (UK and Ireland)

Research interests

• Teaching and Learning Concepts

  Mick Flanagan's research is centred on the examination of the role of the Meyer and Land pedagogic Threshold Concept in the teaching of electrical engineering at the undergaduate level, teaching programming languages to electrical engineering students and in the development of technology-enhanced learning (TEL) environments for continual professional development. This research involves collaborations with Professor J H F Meyer, Director of the Centre for Learning, Teaching, and Research in Higher Education (CLTRHE), in the School of Education at the University of Durham on several aspects of teaching across engineering and related sciences and with Jan Smith, Centre for Academic Practice and Learning Enhancement at Strathclyde University, on the teaching of programming languages. Mick Flanagan is also a collaborator in the European Commission Seventh Framework Information and Communication Technologies Digital Libraries Project TARGET (Transformative, Adaptive, Responsive and enGaging EnvironmenT). The main objective of TARGET is the development of a virtual world serious game that will support rapid competence development in project management and project innovation. Threshold Concepts studies centred on project and innovation management conducted both within undergraduate and postgraduate courses of the academic partners and within the training departments of the industrial partners will inform the development of serious game scenarios. See The Threshold Concept and Undergraduate Teaching for a brief introduction to pedagogic threshold concepts.
  On Epistemes Meyer, J.H.F. and Flanagan, M.T. Featured Invited Lecture given at the Third Biennial Threshold Concepts Symposium: Exploring transformative dimensions of threshold concepts, The University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, 1-2 July 2010. Transformational Learning and Serious Game Design Flanagan, M.T., Hokstad, L., Zimmerman, M., Ackermann, G., Fradinho, M. and Andersen, B. Paper presented at the Third Biennial Threshold Concepts Symposium: Exploring transformative dimensions of threshold concepts, The University of New South Wales and the University of Sydney, Sydney, Australia, 1-2 July 2010. Rapid Competence Development in Serious Games using Case-Based Reasoning and Threshold Concepts Hulpus,I., Fradinho, M., Hayes, C., Hokstad, L., Seager, W. and Flanagan, M. Paper presented at the 2nd International Conference on Computer Supported Education (CSEDU 2010), Valencia, Spain, 7-10 April 2010. Some current perspectives on threshold concepts Introductory Workshop led by Flanagan, M.T. and Meyer, J.H.F. at Improving Student Learning - For the 21st Century Learner, The 17th Improving Student Learning Symposium, Imperial College London, UK, 7-9 September 2009. Compounded Thresholds in Electrical Engineering Flanagan, M. T., Taylor, P. and Meyer, J.H.F. In 'Threshold Concepts and Transformational Learning' Meyer, J.H.F., Land, R., and Baillie, C., (eds), Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, 227−239 (2010) [Educational Futures: Rethinking Theory and Practice, Volume 42] The Threshold Concept J H F Meyer and M T Flanagan A workshop presented at National Acadamy for the Integration of Research and Teaching and Learning (NAIRTL) 2nd Annual Conference - Teaching and Learning in Higher Education: Challenging Assumptions, Waterford Institute of Technology, Waterford, Ireland, 13th - 14th November 2008 Compounded Thresholds in Electrical Engineering M T Flanagan, P Taylor and J H F Meyer Presented at the Threshold Concepts Conference: from theory to practice Queen's University, Kingston, Ontario, Canada, 18th - 20th June 2008 From playing to understanding: the transformative potential of discourse versus syntax in learning to program Flanagan, M. T. and Smith, J. In 'Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines', Land, R., Meyer, J.H.F. and Smith, J., (eds), Sense Publishers, Rotterdam, pp 91-104, (2008), [Educational Futures: Rethinking Theory and Practice, Peters, M.A & Freeman-Moir, J. (Eds), volume 16] ISBN 978-90-8790-267-4 (paperback), ISBN 978-90-8790-268-1 (hardback) The Threshold Concept in Electrical Engineering M T Flanagan Presented at 6th Annual American Society for Engineering Education (ASEE) Global Colloquium on Engineering Education Boğaziçi University, Istanbul, Turkey, 1-4 October, 2007. Thresholds, interdisciplinarity and enculturation across the engineering and science disciplines M T Flanagan and J H F Meyer Proceedings of the 2007 15th International Symposium Improving Student Learning − For What?, Trinity College, Dublin, Ireland, 3−5 September 2007, Rust, C. (Ed), OCSLD, Oxford (2008), vol 15, pp 48-58. Some thoughts on threshold concepts in electronic and electrical engineering: Reactive Power, Characteristic Impedance and Resonance? M T Flanagan 1st Durham Threshold Concepts Symposium (Science and Engineering) University of Durham, 19 February 2007 Threshold concepts: troublesome topographies for the Google generation M T Flanagan and J Smith Presented at Beyond Boundaries: New Horizons for Research into Higher Education Annual Conference of the Society for Research into Higher Education Brighton: 12 - 14 December 2006 From playing to understanding: the transformative potential of discourse versus syntax in learning to program M T Flanagan and J Smith Threshold Concepts within the Disciplines Symposium University of Strathclyde, Glasgow, UK, 30 August−1 September 2006 Abstract of the presentation
  Abbreviations and Acronyms used in Higher Education Research and Engineering Education (The UK and The Republic of Ireland) Click here for a list of abbreviations and acronyms.

  
  

• Impedance Spectroscopy applied to Root Canal Diagnostics

  A collaboration initiated by Professor Kishor Gulabivala, Head of Endodontology, UCL Eastman Dental Institute, on the application of impedance spectroscopy to the detection of root canal apices and to the diagnostics of root canal infections.

  Al-bulushi A, Levinkind M, Flanagan M, Ng Y-L, Gulabivala K (2008) Effect of canal preparation and residual root filling material on root impedance, International Endodontic Journal, 41(13), 892-904. ISSN: 0143-2885 Ardeshna,S.M., Flanagan,M., Ng,Y.L., Gulabivala,K. (2008). An investigation into the relationship between apical root impedance and canal anatomy. International Endodontic Journal 41(9), 814-814. ISSN: 1365-2591 Al-bulushi,A., Levinkind,M., Flanagan,M., Gulabivala,K. (2006). Effect of canal preparation and residual root filling material on root impedance. International Endodontic Journal 39(9), 739-739. ISSN: 0143-2885 Impedance Spectroscopy: Regression Program Impedance Spectroscopy: Simulation Program

  
  
  

• Biosensor Modelling

  Error analysis of classical immunoassay formats, e.g. radioimmunoassay, has determined the most appropriate formats for a given application. However, it is not clear that the conclusions of classical immunoassay error analysis apply to all immunosensor formats. Models of immunosensors and Monte Carlo simulations of immunosensors have been developed to facilitate a rational design strategy and to determine the optimum immunoassay formats for immunosensor applications. Several of the underpinning base classes have been translated from their original C++ format to Java and are available in Flanagan's public Java Scientific library, e.g. Grating coupling and planar waveguides Prism coupling and planar waveguides                           Gouy Chapman Stern Potentials Donnan Equilibria

  
  

• Object-Oriented Programming in Engineering and Science

  The more general classes of a Java scientific and numerical library, written by Mick Flanagan to support his own research in modelling bioelectronic systems and his undergraduate teaching of both object-oriented programming and software for control and system engineering, are available as a package entitled flanagan which may be downloaded as a jar file.
  	Details of the publicly available classes forming this library, their documentation and the download instructions may be found on Michael Thomas Flanagan's Java Scientific Library. Some introductory notes on Java for undergraduates may be found on Object Oriented Programming Courses.

Teaching

• Research on Teaching and Learning Concepts
  
  
• Nanotechnology and Health Care
  
          This is a module on the MSc in Nanotechnology.
  
  
• On-line support for Object Oriented Programming
  
  

  Running a Java, C++ (and C) programmes on the Unix System Introduction to the Java language designed for engineering students Documenting Programs Some Exercises

  Running a Java programme on your own computer Example Programs Java on the Internet

Personal details

Dr Mick Flanagan is a part-time Senior Reseach Associate in the UCL Department of Computer Science and a part-time Teaching Fellow in the UCL Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering. He retired in 2007 from his full time staff position in the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering.

Dr Flanagan has moved across the disciplines as his career progressed. He started his research career as a biochemist (BSc and PhD from the Biochemistry Department, University of Sheffield, England). He developed an interest in the design of instrumentation for biomedical applications during his PhD in which he was involved in the building a fluorescence lifetime and fluorescence polarisation monitoring instruments in studying protein binding sites. He then moved to the Biophysics and Optics Division of the UK National Institute for Medical Research (MRC NIMR), London, where he continued to work on the application of advanced spectroscopic instrumentation to biomedical research, e.g. the structure of influenza virus haemagglutinin. In addition, he became a member of the programming group developing packages for the analysis of biomedical data, e.g. the determination of antibody affinity distributions.

He left the NIMR to join International Telephone and Telegraph's (ITT's) newly formed Biosciences Group in their then Corporate Laboratory, STL at Harlow, England (now Nortel). The brief of this group was to look, in the long term, at the overlap of biology and electronics and where this overlap leads in the development of new devices or systems, and, in the short term, to develop medical and environmental sensors in which a biological molecule is incorporated into an electronic device, e.g.chemFETs.

In 1982 he moved to the Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering at UCL where he continued both the bioelectronic research (e.g. spin-coated waveguides for immunosensors) and programming research (e.g. Markov processes in modelling complex immunochemical reactions). He also developed an interest in pedagogic research into teaching and learning concepts in higher education, especially in the value of the Meyer and Land threshold concept in analysing troublesome concepts in the teaching of programming languages and electronic engineering. He has taught courses on bionanotechnology, object-oriented programming languages, procedural programming languages, programming for systems and control engineering, control theory, instrumentation, electromagnetic theory, biophysics for engineers and physicists and introductory electronics for chemists and biochemists.

He will, as a Teaching Fellow of UCL, continue both his pedagogic and programming research and will continue to lecture on the MSc in Nanotechnology. He will deliver the module Nanotechnology and Health Care

He has served on several UK Research Council and the then UK Department of Trade and Industry (dti) committees concerned with molecular electronics, instrumentation and sensors.

Dr Michael Thomas Flanagan

Department of Electronic and Electrical Engineering

UCL (University College London)

Torrington Place

London

WC1E 7JE

   

Office: Room G05, Ground Floor, 66-72 Gower Street

   

E-mail: m.flanagan@ee.ucl.ac.uk

   

UK Telephone: 020 7679 7636

Internal Telephone: 47636

International Telephone: +44 20 7679 7636

   

UK Fax: 020 7388 9325

International Fax: +44 20 7388 9325

   

How to find me (maps & local transport)