e-Literate

Present is Prologue

Tag: straddling the chasm

  • The Odd Couple: How Ed Tech Must Support Vastly Different Types of Professors

    An edited version of this post was first published at The Chronicle of Higher Education

    Let’s admit it, there can be some real tension when a college is faced with choosing a new learning-management system, or any software used by more than one department.

    Since the decision involves the administrators who will support the system — commonly called an LMS — and professors who will use it, who should lead the process? Should staff members just get input from faculty members, or should professors vote on the final decision? Or should professors run the process?

    This is when distrust between the two sides can emerge. IT administrators may fear that professors will make the pace unbearably slow with an overly deliberative approach. And professors may assume that IT has already determined what system to buy, and may not take their input seriously. Or they may worry that the meetings will be dominated by those needy power users from the psychology department.

    (more…)

  • Plus Ca Change: About that ed tech adoption curve

    All the same We take our chances
    Laughed at by Time, Tricked by Circumstances
    Plus ca change, Plus c’est la meme chose
    The more that things change, The more they stay the same

    – Rush, Circumstances

    Over the past few years I have increased my usage of the technology adoption curve – originating from Everett Rogers and extended by Geoffrey Moore – to explain some of the tension faced by ed tech support organizations. In a nutshell, a bigger determination of adoption patterns of pedagogical and technology-enabled changes in education is from social change issues rather than the innovation (whether purely pedagogical or tech-based) itself. It’s not technology, it’s people. One graphic in particular that I use is based on the notion that while Moore presented a chasm in the technology adoption curve describing solutions moving across the chasm to reach majority markets, a bigger issue is that we will always have innovators, early adopters, majority and laggard groups in education, with a constant flux of teaching and learning innovations. Therefore the issue is straddling the chasm, helping both sides.

    When Michael and I gave a keynote at last month’s OpenEd conference, the always interesting Alan Levine pointed out via Twitter (and referencing a blog post of his) that this perspective reminded him of one he read years ago and rediscovered in 2014. I found the article (and the author, I think), and it is a fascinating read that shows just how strong the pattern of innovation in ed tech is. The 1994 article could be written today with just a few changes to examples used. (more…)