Information Literacy in Your Curriculum: A Guide for Instructors - MCC

Suggestions on How to Use the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education

For Faculty: How to Use the Framework

A vital benefit in using threshold concepts as one of the underpinnings for the Framework is the potential for collaboration among disciplinary faculty, librarians, teaching and learning center staff, and others. Creating a community of conversations about this enlarged understanding should engender more collaboration, more innovative course designs, and a more inclusive consideration of learning within and beyond the classroom. Threshold concepts originated as faculty pedagogical research within disciplines. Because information literacy is both a disciplinary and a transdisciplinary learning agenda, using a conceptual framework for information literacy program planning, librarian-faculty collaboration, and student co-curricular projects can offer great potential for curricular enrichment and transformation. As a faculty member, you can take the following approaches:

• Investigate threshold concepts in your discipline and gain an understanding of the approach used in the Framework as it applies to the discipline you know.

— What are the specialized information skills in your discipline that students should develop, such as using primary sources (history) or accessing and managing large data sets (science)?

• Look for workshops at your campus teaching and learning center on the flipped classroom and consider how such practices could be incorporated into your courses.

— What information and research assignments can students do outside of class to arrive prepared to apply concepts and conduct collaborative projects?

• Partner with your IT department and librarians to develop new kinds of multimedia assignments for courses.

— What kinds of workshops and other services should be available for students involved in multimedia design and production?

• Help students view themselves as information producers, individually and collaboratively.

— In your program, how do students interact with, evaluate, produce, and share information in various formats and modes?

• Consider the knowledge practices and dispositions in each information literacy frame for possible integration into your own courses and academic program.

— How might you and a librarian design learning experiences and assignments that will encourage students to assess their own attitudes, strengths/weaknesses, and knowledge gaps related to information?

For Administrators: How to Support the Framework

Through reading the Framework document and discussing it with your institutions’ librarians, you can begin to focus on the best mechanisms to implement the Framework in your institution. As an administrator, you can take the following approaches:

• Host or encourage a series of campus conversations about how the institution can incorporate the Framework into student learning outcomes and supporting curriculum
• Provide the resources to enhance faculty expertise and opportunities for understanding and incorporating the Framework into the curriculum
• Encourage committees working on planning documents related to teaching and learning (at the department, program, and institutional levels) to include concepts from the Framework in their work
• Provide resources to support a meaningful assessment of information literacy of students at various levels at your institution
• Promote partnerships between faculty, librarians, instructional designers, and others to develop meaningful ways for students to become content creators, especially in their disciplines

Information on this page was borrowed from the Framework for Information Literacy for Higher Education.  

Filed by the ACRL Board on February 2, 2015. Adopted by the ACRL Board, January 11, 2016.

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-ShareAlike 4.0 International License.