Virginia Tucker from San Jose State University presented first after the coffee break on her research into threshold concepts in IL professional education. Information literacy professionals undertake a variety of roles such as teaching, mentoring, facilitating the information experience of others. Virginia cited the Information experience book, and introduced the idea of "threshold concepts" for learning. She stated that it's pretty hard for a concept to qualify as "threshold", it must be transformative counterintuitive, troublesome, integrative, irreversible and bounded. Threshold concepts can be used in curriculum design, but one must consider the sequencing of the content, the learning processes, and how learners and educators recognise that a threshold concept has been internalised (I.e. through assessment). Curriculums need to shift from being skillls based to being concepts based. The department that Virginia teaches in is wholly online, where the role of the instructor is to "participate and provoke in creative and playful ways". Students work frequently in groups, and students from different time zones can struggle with scheduling. Online discussions are reflective, and evalauative. Discussions are problem solving, and involve peer testing of databases that students have created. It was really interesting to hear how Virginia manages and facilitates group work for distance learning students.
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