I’ve spent the last three days reading and re-reading Dron’s (2014) chapter in Online Distance Education, thinking about innovation, technology and education. It’s so tremendously rich with ideas I’d not known about previously, or had only thought about in different contexts than education technology.
Some of what keeps me going back to this chapter is the myriad of ways that we, within Western culture, use the word innovation, and the multiplicity of ways that it is used in this chapter. Merriam Webster (n.d.) defines innovation as:
- the introduction of something new
- a new idea, method or device
While I’ve certainly used innovation in this way, it would seem that in our cultural context it means more – there’s an implication to the word that suggests technology, and useful technology.
Innovation is something we talk about regularly in my household, as my partner is a prototyper and inventor. Our conversations about innovation and innovating often center around the use of ideas or objects, their ability to simplify and make life better in one way or another.
The Dron (2014) chapter discusses the adoption of new technologies (innovations) through several models. I investigated each of them, from Roger’s innovation diffusion theory (Rogers, 1995 as cited in Dron, 2014, p. 243) to UTAUT (Venkatesh, Morrris, Davis, & Davis, 2003, as cited in Dron, 2014, p.244) and had several conversations with my partner as we looked at what fit with our own experiences and observations. Ultimately, looking to understand educators in particular, I found this metaphor (the image is hyperlinked to the original page):
The pencil metaphor echoes most closely my experience of working with school populations (from K to post-secondary) as to how educators respond to new introductions of technology in the pedagogical or andragogical space.
The ferrules being the corrolary to Roger’s laggards, the leaders parallel to Roger’s innovators. The piece that this (rather un-academic) model has that is missing from the other ones is the erasers and hangers-on, who, in my experience, are as big a barrier to adoption of new technology as the ferrules. They are the architects of or the believers in the hard system, the non-responsive context. It is no wonder that, as Dron points out, adoption of new technologies and change happens most expeditiously in contexts that are tolerant of and promote diversity (Seely Brown & Duguid, 2000, as cited in Dron, 2014), as change happens in places that can entertain a variety of viewpoints.
I’d love to wrap this post up into a tidy bow, but that’s not possible yet. I want to pause with this rich chapter – to not feel rushed to have a final understanding of the richness that is in it. I’ll continue exploring other pieces, as well as digging deeper into some of the technologies that Dron (2014) discusses – some that are already defunct, and others that look promising for possible classroom work.
Thank you for sharing your musings Lisa, I will be distributing the pencil metaphor amongst my colleagues. The iterative process of reaching our late adopters, and designating faculty “champions” has been helpful, and these types of illustrations are beneficial in opening up much-needed dialogue as we crawl toward our goal of becoming innovative educators.
Hi Lisa – thank you for taking time to comment. I’m curious as to whether your faculty designates ‘champions’ overtly? Do people take up the banner in a staff meeting and let people know that their door is open to share their successes, or do they do mini-PD in staff meetings? I’d love to see ways to extend this into different work spaces. I’m currently working in post-secondary and find that we self-designate our willingness to be bold and take technological implementation risks. My experience in the K-12 system was similar.
Hi Lisa and Lisa!
I really liked this metaphor, thank you for sharing, Lisa! Also, I think that communication is a key factor that contributes to the success of any innovation. It is with communication that you can involve people and make them part of the process.
I have worked with several organizations where applying a new innovation was a hard process and we faced lots of issues with the employees. In my experience, late adopters were the employees who faced problems with communication, especially with their direct reports which affected the organization’s environment, in particular, the trust between management and employees!
Hi Tala!
Your comment makes me wonder about the use of change management strategies within our faculties to help with the adoption of digital teaching methods beyond the current “it’s in the Moodle” dryness. Our institution is going through the centralization of all services right now – impacting EVERY employee – and has been consulting with specialists and building capacity within our own staff in terms of change management. I’ll talk to my chair about the possibility of about bringing some of those folks in to talk with our faculty about adopting more interesting and innovative methods of online teaching. Thanks for commenting!
Hi Lisa,
I have really enjoyed reading your post! I agree with you that the definition of innovation is often used nowadays in the context of technological innovations.
I really like your take on the pencil metaphor with regards to innovation processes, and how disruptions and diversity foster and give birth to innovation! It relates for me to the concept of “disruptive change” and how those who are the “leaders” or the “sharp ones” lead this change in the institutions.
Marta
Thanks for taking the time to write, Marta!
Disruption is such an important concept in all this. Lately I’ve been working with my students around the idea of productive struggle and zones of proximal development, which is analogous to Kauffman’s idea of the adjacent possible. The ideas, while similar, are applied in different fields (adjacent possible in innovation and zones of proximal development in education). We need disruption to help us push the edges of our thinking and learning, thereby making opportunity for new learning possibilities.
Thanks for sharing your connections!