Keys to Teaching the Six Threshold Concepts Workshop

1. SIX KEYS TO TEACHING THRESHOLD
CONCEPTS

2. A little background
Some information about me:
 University of Rhode Island librarian for 25 years
 Providing instruction in academic libraries for more than 35 years
 Worked mostly in small libraries where DIY was the norm
 Author/co-author of four books and numerous papers about Information
Literacy and Assessment
 jburkhardt@uri.edu

3. The Framework and the Standards
 The Framework mimics the Standards to some degree
 The Framework is more theoretical than the Standards
 There is no Information Literacy police that requires that we use either
document (although your boss may!)
 The road to Information Literacy is long
 Only so much information can be conveyed in one lesson

4. Unpacking the Framework’s threshold
concepts
 The Framework for IL in Higher Education was created by a committee
 The Framework for Information Literacy in Higher Education is
theoretical in nature.
 The “frames” or threshold concepts of the Framework are broad, indistinct
and overlapping.
 The Framework neither guides nor limits.
 The Framework mimics the Standards for Information Literacy for Higher
Education to a degree.

5. Unpacking the threshold concepts
Keep in mind the basics that students need to know
to become Information Literate:
How to find and select information
How to determine the validity, reliability and
accuracy of information
How to apply selected information to a problem

6. Unpacking the threshold concepts
 The six threshold concepts given in the Framework
document are:
 Authority is Constructed and Contextual
 Information Creation as a Process
 Information Has Value
 Research as Inquiry
 Scholarship as Conversation
 Searching as Strategic Exploration

7. Authority threshold
 To get across this threshold, a researcher will know that when seeking
information they must:
 Know what an author is and who can be one
 know who authored information being considered
 know what makes the author credible
 understand that levels of authority exist
 know how to select the level of authority appropriate to the information need
 understand that the student may be an authority in some circumstances.

8. Information Creation threshold
 To cross the Information Creation threshold a researcher will
understand that he/she must:
 Recognize that information comes in many different formats
 Understand how the format relates to the content/depth/reliability of the
information presented
 Understand the role of editors/publishers as gatekeepers
 Understand that some information can only be obtained in a specific format
 Be able to identify and select appropriate sources in an electronic
environment where previous “markers” no longer apply.

9. Information has Value threshold
 To cross this threshold, a researcher will understand that he/she must:
 Recognize that information is property that is owned and has value
 Understand the rules governing the use of information and apply them as
appropriate
 Recognize that some organizations gather, hold and limit access to
information
 Understand the value of personal information and privacy
 Understand how third parties collect and use personal information

10. Research as Inquiry threshold
 To cross this threshold a researcher will understand that he/she must:
 Understand that research and inquiry are inextricably linked.
 Understand that research involves finding out what questions have been
asked previously and how those questions have been answered
 Understand that research involves asking new questions or using a new
perspective to re-evaluate an existing question
 Understand that information exists in many sources and types of sources
 Understand the process of drawing information from many sources together
to create new information

11. Scholarship as a Conversation threshold
 To cross this threshold the researcher will understand that he/she must:
 Understand that much of the conversation in scholarship is invisible
 Know that the published record of research on a topic is the most accessible
part of the conversation for most people
 Know how to access the published record of research on a topic
 Understand internet-driven means of holding scholarly conversations
 Understand that researchers outside “the academy” can be part of scholarly
conversations

12. Searching as Strategic Exploration threshold
 To cross this threshold a researcher will understand that he/she must:
 Know how to narrow and refine a topic
 Know how to select and use a variety of techniques for strategic searching
 Recognize that different disciplines use the same words to mean different
things
 Understand that as information is acquired, it is often necessary to revise
search strategies and use different information sources
 Understand that flexibility, critical thinking and open mindedness are assets
to answering a research question

13. Threshold Concepts and the classroom
 The bad news
 The Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education indicates that
each individual institution should come up with its own individual plan for
information literacy instruction based on individual and local needs.
 The Threshold Concepts don’t clearly map to classroom activities.
 The students we see are almost always unsophisticated searchers

14. Threshold Concepts and the classroom
 The good news:
 All the Information Literacy lessons developed up to this point still apply to
some degree.
 Students still need to learn the basic concepts and applications for
Information Literacy.
 Students are receptive to using non-Google sources if they are shown how to
use them and if they understand how the alternate tools will do a better job.

15. Threshold Concepts and the classroom
 Things to keep in mind when matching classroom instruction to the
threshold concepts for Information Literacy:
 Keep it simple. Be strategic about what you teach.
 Even if your only contact with students is a general one-shot
session, resist the urge to cram everything into the session.
 A lesson may address more than one Threshold Concept. Think
about how your lesson applies to all parts of the Framework.

16. Threshold Concepts and the Classroom
 Create your lessons from finish to start and ask yourself:
 At the end of the lesson, what do you want students to know or be
able to do? (These are your learning outcomes. Write them
down.)
 How can you plan your lesson to achieve your learning outcomes?
 How can you create lessons that will keep students focused on the
learning outcomes?
 Assessment—how will you know the students “got it”?
 Feedback—how will students know they “got it”?

17. Six Keys to Teaching Threshold Concepts
 Make it relevant
 Provide practice/retrieval
 Make it memorable
 Make it challenging
 Make it incremental
 Provide assessment and feedback

18. Key #1: Make it relevant

19. Key #1 Make it relevant
Students have a lot of distractions
To learn, students must pay attention
To teach effectively, the instructor must get the
students’ attention

20. Key #1 Make it relevant
One way to capture students’ attention is to plan your
lesson around a subject students :
 care about
 relate to
 have some experience with
 need to know now

21. Key #1 Make it relevant
 Students learn better when they understand that the lesson relates
to them in the here and now
 Create a “hook” that will capture students’ interest by asking questions
that are relevant to them. For example:
 Are you aware that the sugar in the coffee you brought with you today may be
poisonous?
 Does anybody in the room want to become diabetic?
 Who is interested in learning how to lose 10 pounds of ugly fat this semester?

22. Key #1 Make it relevant
 Keep their attention by requiring student participation
 Ask leading questions and get students to answer them to get to the heart
of the lesson. For example:
 What do we know about sugar? (Causes cavities, too much makes you fat,
not injurious in reasonable quantities….)
 How do we know what we know?
 Who says what we know is true?
 What would you say to someone who claimed sugar is poisonous?
 What would make you believe someone who claimed sugar is poisonous?

23. Key #1 Make it relevant
 This scenario addresses aspects of the following Threshold Concepts:
 Authority
 Research as inquiry
 Scholarship as a conversation

24. Key #1 Make it relevant
 Get their attention
 Keep the lesson moving
 Keep the students engaged
 Keep the students active
 Remind students how the lesson is relevant in their lives

25. Key #2 Provide practice/retrieval

26. Key #2 Provide practice/retrieval
 Students retrieve/remember the lesson more easily when
they have:
 tried to solve a problem themselves before learning how
 practiced application of the lesson in a variety of situations
 had the information repeated/reinforced at spaced intervals
 learned the lesson inter-leaved with related learning

27. Key #2 Provide practice/retrieval
 Provide practice with variety. For example:
 Pose a question
 Ask students to search for library resources that might answer the question
 Ask students think about disciplines where research on this topic might be
conducted
 Ask students who else might produce information on the topic
 Ask students to explain the similarities and differences between the searches

28. Key #2 Provide practice and retrieval
 This scenario addresses aspects of the following Threshold Concepts:
 Searching as strategic exploration
 Research as inquiry
 Information creation as a process

29. Key #2 Provide practice and retrieval
 Allow students to try a task without instruction
 Teach students using a variety of examples
 Repeat and reinforce lessons
 Interleave the learning with other related subjects

30. Key #3 Make it memorable

31. Key #3 Make it memorable
 Often-used information moves from short term memory to long term
memory.
 If you learn something in more than one way (read about it, try it at
home, teach someone else how to do it) the same information will be
stored in more than one place in the brain.
 The more you recall the information from its storage spot(s), the easier it
is to recall it the next time.

32. Key #3 Make it memorable
 The brain makes links between similar memories, even if they are stored
in different places. For example:
 When learning how to build and fly a kite, your brain will retrieve I the
information you read about flying kites and information you watched about
building and flying a kite.
 When teaching someone else how to fly a kite you will create a third place
where information about teaching kite building is stored in your brain. Your
brain then links all three related memories about kite building.
 When you again need information about kite building your brain will provide
information from all three storage places.

33. Key #3Make it memorable
 Create exercises that use multiple kinds of learning
 Create exercises that apply the lesson in different disciplines or situations
 Incorporate previously mastered skills in exercises for lessons on other topics
 Ask students to recall what they have learned
 Ask students to teach what they have learned to others

34. Key #3 Make it memorable
For example:
 Have students both write and verbally summarize; have them learn
something in a small group and teach what they learned to a large group.
 Have students search a single topic in a variety of disciplines, then compare
the results as a group
 Have students find and summarize an article about plagiarism/open
access/privacy

35. Key #3 Make it memorable
 The scenarios above address aspects of the following Threshold Concepts:
 Information Creation as a Process
 Searching as Strategic Exploration
 Information has Value

36. Key #4 Make it challenging

37. Key #4 Make it Challenging
 People remember things they worked hard to learn
 People remember things learned using something other than their
preferred learning style
 People remember things they learned by applying something they knew
before to a new concept or situation
 People remember things they attempted to do before they knew how
 People remember things they learned in a group

38. Key #4 Make it Challenging
 Start with something known and use analogies to relate the known to the
unknown
 Ask students to come up with their own analogies
 Make lessons incrementally more difficult over time or over the course of
the lesson
 Provide “brainteasers” that students can use to practice the lesson outside
of class

39. Key #4 Make it challenging
 These scenarios address aspects of the following Threshold Concepts:
 Scholarship as a conversation
 Information creation as a process
 Research as inquiry

40. Key #5 Make it incremental

41. Key #5: Make it incremental
 Start with what students know or offer a lesson that will help students to
start together at the same level of understanding
 Move forward in small increments, adding one new idea at a time
 Keep in mind that you know much more than the students do. Try not to
skip steps that you take for granted.
 Scaffold your lessons allowing the first lesson to serve as a platform for the
second lesson and so on.

42. Key #5 Make it incremental
 For example:
 Move from known to unknown in small steps
 Teach keyword searching, then teach the use of the Boolean “and”
 Ask students to come up with ideas that could improve the search process
 Are there other kinds of searches that might help you locate information?

43. Key #5 Make it incremental
 These scenarios address aspects of the following Threshold Concepts:
 Searching as strategic exploration
 Research as inquiry
 Scholarship as a conversation

44. Key # 6 Assess

45. Key #6 Assess
 Assessment tells you whether or not students “got it”
 Assessment tells students whether or not they “got it”
 Assessment tells you whether your lesson was successful
 Assessment can tell you where your lesson needs to be improved

46. Key #6 Assess
 Use a variety of assessment techniques
 In class wrap-up questions/answers
 Written test
 Completion of a set task
 Group or individual question and answer
 Peer teaching
 Individual and/or group presentations

47. Key #6 Assess
 FOLLOW UP!
 Provide immediate feedback, especially for wrong answers
 If your assessment shows that the students didn’t “get it” (did not achieve
the learning outcomes for your lesson)
 Identify what specifics they didn’t get
 Identify where the lesson should be changed to make it more effective
 Make changes
 Repeat the lesson using new material
 Reassess

48. Key #6 Assess
 Provide students with a rubric before setting them a task. The rubric
should:
 Let them know what they are supposed to learn
 Let them know what the assignment/task is
 Let them know how and on what they will be evaluated
 Let them know how to achieve the highest “grade” for the assignment

49. Conclusion
 Framework is similar to the standards
 Lessons and curriculum already in play still apply
 Lessons should be created with explicit learning outcomes
 Practice, recall and application in new situations help students to
remember
 Relevance, applicability and level of difficulty are key ingredients for
student success
 Assessment and revision are key to removing roadblocks that might keep
students from crossing information literacy thresholds.

50. For more information on the Threshold
Concepts
 Wilkinson, Lane
 Sense and Reference blog
 https://senseandreference.wordpress.com/
 Wilkinson evaluated each threshold concept in the Framework when the
draft version was first released. He has since begun a second look at how
the final version is different. His work is very thoughtful and interesting.

51. QUESTIONS AND COMMENTS

52. Contact information
 Please feel free to contact me if you have questions!
 Joanna M. Burkhardt
 University of Rhode Island
 Kingston, RI 02881
 (401) 874-4799
 jburkhardt@uri.edu