Student engagement with information: Applying a threshold concept approach to information literacy development.

Abstract

This paper reports on a project at UNSW Library that is using a threshold concepts approach to rethink Library support for the learning and teaching. Informed by expertise gained from help desk experience, the project team used “troublesome knowledge” or “places where learners get stuck” to identify threshold concepts which enable learners to effectively engage with information in a university environment. The processes of identification included gathering data about troublesome knowledge, then categorising and abstracting this data to identify the threshold concepts. A threshold concepts approach has proved to be transformative, not only in terms of identifying new ways to inform the development of student learning opportunities, but also in widening assumptions about the types of learning experiences that are fundamentally important.