steffen74/assumed-knowledge

Assumed knowledge

The boundary is what a learner can be assumed to know, have and be able to do at a given point of the course. Canvas block 6 holds it for the course start; the material of each unit extends it. Every step a learner is asked to take must lie inside the boundary at that point. A step outside it is a gap: the learner gets stuck, guesses or asks.

What the boundary covers

Not only concepts. Gaps come at least as often from:

• Things they have: accounts, subscriptions, installed software, admin rights, a laptop of their own, a repository of their own.
• Things they have done: a clone, a fork, a uv sync, joining a chat room, accepting an invitation.
• Where things are: which repository, which folder, which link. “Your clone of the template repository” assumes they made one.
• Conventions: what a command prompt is, what “run” means in a notebook, that /command is typed into the agent.

Rules

• The boundary is the instructor’s decision. When it is unclear whether something can be assumed, ask; do not decide.
• Something becomes known only when the material taught it before it is used, or asked learners to do it with instructions they could follow. Being in a video listed for the same unit counts only if the video comes before the task.
• A tool doing it for the learner (an agent, a setup script) counts only if the learner is told to use it at that step, with the exact prompt or command.
• Every artifact a step relies on needs an origin: a step that created it, or a link to where it lives.
• Optional material never extends the boundary.
• When two personas differ, the boundary follows the weaker one, unless block 6 explicitly excludes them.

Typical gaps

• An instruction refers to an object (repository, file, room, account) whose creation step is missing or only implied.
• Two pages name different repositories or folders for the same step.
• A command works only from a specific folder, and the page does not say which.
• A tool the step depends on is free in one plan and paid in another; the page assumes the paid one.
• A task needs a concept that is scheduled for a later unit.

Red flags in class

The same question from several learners; learners waiting for the instructor before they can start; a deliverable missing for a whole group. Treat each as a boundary violation until shown otherwise, and load course-checks to turn it into a check.