What do we teach when we teach information literacy in higher education? This paper describes a pedagogical approach to information literacy that helps instructors focus content around transformative learning thresholds. The threshold concept framework holds promise for librarians because it grounds the instructor in the big ideas and underlying concepts that make information literacy exciting and worth learning about. This paper looks at how this new idea relates to existing standards and posits several threshold concepts for information literacy.
Threshold concepts are a theory of teaching and learning proposed by two British
educators, Jan Meyer and Ray Land. Threshold concepts can be used for teaching information literacy and could inform the Standards revision as well. There are five definitional criteria that make a concept a threshold concept
The curriculum outlines what we believe to be a continuum of skills, competencies, behaviours and attitudes ranging
from functional skills to intellectual operations that together comprise the spectrum of information literacy.
The overarching aim of the curriculum is to help undergraduate learners to develop a high‐level, reflective understanding of information contexts and issues which will empower them with a robust framework for handling new information situations, and to generate strategies for evaluating, analysing and and assimilating that information as needed and at the time it is required.
The emphasis throughout is on the student’s development as a discerning scholar and, beyond the academic arena, as an informed citizen and an autonomous and lifelong learner.
The aim of this article is to discuss some of the challenges and possibilities that librarians may face when engaging in faculty-library collaboration. The main objective is to present findings from two case studies of embedded librarianship at Gjøvik University College (GUC) and to compare these findings with results from a literature review. The literature review is concentrated around collaboration challenges, a possible role-expansion for librarians, team-teaching and assessment of information skills courses. Another objective is to present two pedagogical approaches that are in use at GUC; the tutor approach and the team-teaching approach. Findings from the case studies suggest that faculty staff were impressed with the librarian’s knowledge and they quickly became comfortable with team-teaching and/or leaving the librarian in charge of the students. However there were concerns from both the teacher and librarian about the time-consuming nature of collaborative work. This paper contributes to the literature through a literature review, two case studies and teaching approaches that highlight factors leading to success when collaborating with faculty.
Few issues in higher education are as fundamental as the ability to search for, evaluate, and synthesize information. The need to develop information literacy, the process of finding, retrieving, organizing, and evaluating the ever-expanding collection of online information, has precipitated the need for training in skill-based competencies in higher education, as well as medical and dental education.
Computer science as a field requires curricular guidance, as new innovations are filtered into teaching its knowledge areas at a rapid pace. Furthermore, another trend is the growing number of students with different cultural backgrounds. These developments require taking into account both the differences in learning styles and teaching methods in practice in the development of curricular knowledge areas. In this paper, an intensive collaborative teaching concept, Code Camp, is utilized to illustrate the effect of learning styles on the success of a course. Code Camp teaching concept promotes collaborative learning and multiple skills and knowledge in a single course context. The results indicate that Code Camp as a concept is well liked, increases motivation to learn and is suitable for both intuitive and reflective learners. Furthermore, it appears to provide interesting creative challenges and pushes students to collaborate and work as a team. In particular, the concept also promotes intuition.
The aim of this paper is to present the Information Literacy Instruction Assessment Cycle (ILIAC), to describe the seven stages of the ILIAC, and to offer an extended example that demonstrates how the ILIAC increases librarian instructional abilities and improves student information literacy skills.
Since the release of the Information Literacy Competency Standards for Higher Education,1 academic libraries have implemented a wide range of initiatives and programs. Formats range from traditional library instruction that integrates information literacy concepts in “one shot” sessions to credit-bearing courses that are librarian led and offer course or discipline specific instruction. Delivery modes also range from face-to-face to online instruction. Increasingly, student assessment and indicators related to program impact have become the focus of ongoing discussions. Guidelines such as the Association of College and Research Libraries (ACRL) Standards for Libraries in Higher Education,2 Guidelines for Instruction Programs in Academic Libraries3 and The Value of Academic Libraries: A Comprehensive Research Review and Report4 offer direction related to student assessment and defining program impacts. These documents also reflect a recognition that information literacy and library instruction programs are varied in response to institutional needs