Choosing Our Own Adventure: A Collaborative Threshold Concept Instruction

Workshop• Introduce book• Give examples of lesson plans • Identify troublesome concept• Identify aspects of our instruction that already

engage with threshold concepts • Develop a plan to teach using a particular threshold

concept by tweaking an already existing lesson

The Editors

Hazel McClure, MFA, MLISLiaison to English, Writing, and Environmental StudiesGrand Valley State University Libraries

Gayle Schaub, MA, MLISLiaison to Psychology and SociologyGrand Valley State University Libraries

Patricia Bravender, MLISLiaison to Legal Studies, Criminal Justice, and Hospitality and Tourism ManagementGrand Valley State University Libraries

Create practical lesson plans with a strong conceptual foundation

Develop interactive, hands-on activities

Share ideas with other instruction librarians

A threshold concept can be considered as akin to a portal, opening up a new and previously inaccessible way of thinking about something…

…a transformed way of understanding, or interpreting, or viewing something without which, the learner cannot progress.

Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge: Linkages to Ways of Thinking and Practising within the Disciplines Occasional Report 4 © ETL Project, Universities of Edinburgh, Coventry and Durham, 2003

TransformativeBounded

TroublesomeIntegrativeIrreversible Discursive

Meyer, Jan, and Land, Ray. Overcoming Barriers to Student Understanding : Threshold Concepts and Troublesome Knowledge. Florence, KY, USA: Routledge, 2006.

• Scholarship as Conversation

• Research as Inquiry

• Searching as Strategic Exploration

• Information Creation as a Process

• Authority is Constructed and

Contextual

• Information Has Value

Tracing Information Over TimeXan Goodman, Health and Life Sciences Liaison Librarian

University of Nevada, Las Vegas

Louder than Words: Using Infographics to Teach the Value of Information and Authority

Hazel McClure, Liaison Librarian to English, Writing, and Environmental StudiesChristopher Toth, Assistant Professor of Writing

Grand Valley State University, Allendale, Michigan

Most troublesome concept?

How do students interact with this concept?

Evidence: how do we know students are having

trouble?

How to model? How do we interact with this idea?

What is it about the process? What do practitioners

do?

What are we doing already that gets or shows this

concept?

What do we want students to understand about this

concept?

Lesson idea sharing