We have all seen the movie or read that book that challenges us with the notion; significant changes (or innovations) come from big ideas. While inspiring, this is not necessarily the case in educational technology (or any technology for that matter). Innovation for education does not happen quickly. It can be argued that innovations need to experience the bumps and grinds of growing up. They need to fully develop into something that will have an impact and have their full opportunity realized. Instead of making changes that could potentially prove challenging to implement and receive buy-in, Dron (2014) suggests a more subversive approach, “this primarily means building systems from smaller pieces by assembly…” (p. 253). Innovations need time to grow, to mature and to evolve. By taking an idea and trying to make it grow up too fast will deprive it of the joys of childhood.
As we see technology rapidly change, it is essential to address that those technologies that accompany education need to change as well. As with many disruptive technologies, we may find that the changes that have the most significant impact are the ones that start out small. These small changes can course correct and make the necessary adjustments to become a better version of themselves. It is much easier to turn around a small boat than it is a large freighter. As Dron (2014) suggests, “Ideas and developments occur in relation to what came before, building and nearly always incorporating earlier forms” (p.241). In time, those small innovations can combine with other smaller innovations to evolve into significant changes.
As innovations continue to disrupt education (as they should), the question bears asking, Should we listen to these little disruptions and wait for innovation to evolve or should we plan our innovations with the full intention of a complete product?
References
Dron, J. (2014). Innovation and Change: Changing how we Change. In Zawacki-Richter, O. & T. Anderson (Eds.), Online distance education: Towards a research agenda.Athabasca, AB: AU Press.
December 20, 2018 at 1:33 pm
Hello Chad,
Excellent post on Small ideas and Big innovations. You posed the question should we listen to these little disruptions and wait for innovation to evolve or should we plan our innovations with the full intention of a complete product?
I believe we should plan our innovations with the intentions of having a complete product however release them as prototypes on an innovation continuum and focus on continuous improvement. We must be cognizant of the outcomes and the effect we wish to achieve on the learners.
In my mind of the outcome is to sustain innovation that renews something, conducting innovation as prototype can preserve or extend their life. Incremental improvements is safe and easy approach to accomplish this outcome. It usually requires little risk for what can be substantial return. If the outcome you wish to achieve is more transformational and creates something. At the other end of the continuum is total transformation. This involves radical change and is a very powerful kind of change. I feel it should be complete start to finish as a total transformation is complex to design, which implies significant effort.
Whatever the outcome desired is there is no doubt that the learning of design thinking process needs should consider mindshifts in order to progress in the development of design thinking mindsets. as outlined by Goldman, Carrol, Kaayadondo, Cavagnarom Royalty, Roth, Kwek and Kim (2014).
References
Goldman, S. et al. (2012). Assessing d.learning: Capturing the journey of becoming a design thinker. In H. Plattner, C. Meinel & L. Leifer (eds). Design thinking research: Understanding innovation. (pp. 13-33). Berlin: Springer.
January 15, 2019 at 1:59 pm
Hi Gwen,
I apologize for the late response. I am not sure how I missed this. I really resonate with what you are saying in regards to having a plan for innovation and then releasing them as prototypes on a continuum. Your comment lead me back to re-read Dron and his discussion of soft versus hard technologies.
As I consider my future in instructional design I am more drawn to the softer technologies. Dron states, “Hard technologies are resistant to change and embody the status quo. Soft technologies enable creativity and change” (p.243). Many of the technologies that I work with in my practice are of the hard variety. As an example, platforms like the LMS that our school uses can be very rigid and a closed. When the student is done with the course they no longer have access to the resources that were once readily available. An area that is becoming of much interest to me are more open systems that allow the students access to all the resources past the point of their schooling. These innovations do exist (Mahara, open school, and evernote) and would be classified as soft technologies. They may have their issues yet they are extremely flexible and open. In the end I believe that this benefits the students.
Soft technologies may have their issues and may have some work to do. I wonder, in the interest of the students, if they are technologies worth pursuing?
References
Dron, J. (2014). Innovation and Change: Changing how we Change. In Zawacki-Richter, O. & T. Anderson (Eds.), Online distance education: Towards a research agenda. Athabasca, AB: AU Press.
January 19, 2019 at 8:22 am
Hello Chad,
I enjoyed reading your post and reflecting on the question of “should we listen to these little disruptions and wait for innovation to evolve or should we plan our innovations with the full intention of a complete product?”. In my role as a Learning Technologies Specialist and Part-time Professor, I find the tools I recommend most often to faculty follow Gwen’s suggestion of planning innovations with the purpose of producing a complete product and publish them as prototypes while focusing on continuous improvement.
Products such as the Desire2Learn Learning Management System, Facebook, FlipGrid, and Slack all have an educational use and receive continuous delivery updates to improved features based on user feedback. This form of agile software development emphasizes collaboration with customers and functional software (Beck et al., 2001) and provides updates to software in a continuous and timely manner. Agile software development has also shown improvements in customer satisfaction, software quality and increased productivity (Matharu, Mishra, Singh & Upadhyay, 2015). By providing constant updates and enhancements in small doses, users will not feel as overwhelmed with the changes, as they are not all happening at once.
References
Beck, K., Grenning, J., Martin, R. C., Beedle, M., Highsmith, J., Mellor, S., . . . Marick, B. (2001). Manifesto for Agile Software Development. Retrieved January 19, 2019, from http://agilemanifesto.org/
Matharu, G. S., Mishra, A., Singh, H., & Upadhyay, P. (2015). Empirical Study of Agile Software Development Methodologies. ACM SIGSOFT Software Engineering Notes, 40(1), 1-6. doi:10.1145/2693208.2693233