ALT-C presentation 2009 with Asher Rospigliosi of Brighton Business School. Tread softly looks at staff adoption of technology in HE.

1. Tread softly: making secure steps towards wider
adoption of pedagogically-focussed e-learning at
Brighton Business School
Sue Greener and Asher
Rospigliosi
University of Brighton
S.L.Greener@brighton.ac.uk
A.Rospigliosi@brighton.ac.uk

2. Back story
• Learning and Teaching Fellowship grant, UoB
• Three phase project:
– Initiation
– Support
– Feedback
• It grew….
Annual Learning and Teaching
Conference
2009 Conference
Friday 10th July 2009: From spark to flame

3. Research enquiry (dream?)
Beginning with the perceived “problem”
of adoption of new technologies by
academic staff
How do experienced and new academics
begin to fit e-learning into their
personal pedagogies?
Bringing a psychological and sociological
perspective to the problem of adopting
TEL - how does this offer us insight into
wider technology adoption strategies?
Could we help to enthuse, encourage,
support those who were not natural
early adopters?

4. Surfacing initial assumptions
• Roger’s model (1962) of innovators, early adopters, early
majority, late majority and laggards – does it help?
• Moore (1991) crossing the chasm between early adopters
and the follower groups
• Anderson et al (1998), based on Geoghegan (1994) – just
two groups: early adopters (EA) and mainstream faculty
(MF)
• Four factors stop us crossing the chasm/gap
– Ignorance of the gap
– The technologists’ alliance
– Alienation of mainstream faculty
– Lack of compelling reason to adopt

5. Where do you place yourself on
technology adoption
• UofB (MF) • CAL (EA)

6. What is your job?
• UofB (MF) • CAL (EA)

7. What VLE does your institution have?
• UofB (MF) • CAL (EA)

8. Who do you use TEL with?
• UofB (MF) • CAL (EA)

9. How long have you used TEL?
• UofB (MF) • CAL (EA)

10. Why did you take up TEL?
• UofB (MF) • CAL (EA)

11. Had you used TEL as a learner?
• UofB (MF) • CAL (EA)

12. What barriers did you face?
• UofB (MF) • CAL (EA)

13. What support might have helped?
• UofB (MF) • CAL (EA)

14. Qualitative responses 1
“how motivating it is
• What surprised them? when students learning
becomes fun”
• EA: – mainly positive
• MF: more negative
“learning moves out of
your control”
• What didn’t they like? “colleague inertia”
• EA:
• MF: “It takes hours”

15. What was familiar about this learning
process?
• EA focussed on problems with software,
crashes, problem solving
• MF focussed on time taken and related to
ease of use
“like learning Word
only easier”

16. What contradicted your prior beliefs?
• EA tended to find external responses
contradicted their prior beliefs:
“student confidence
“technology is a in using software is
tool not a always lower than I
solution” expect”
• MF focussed on personal perceptions which
were contradicted:
“that it would be
“found it more complicated and that I would
useful and less fail to understand it”
scary”

17. When asked to reflect on the experience of first
using new technology to enhance learning
• EA:
“it’s much more about
pedagogy in my
classroom, not the
“regaining technology”
confidence –
enjoying learning
new skills again”
• MF: some were excited about technology, some feeling
over-stretched, some more relaxed than they were, found
routines difficult to remember, some, as with
technologists, focussed on learning not technology.
• No clear distinction with application of hindsight

18. Problems they faced
1. Students’ digital literacy
2. Staff resistance
3. Technology seen as gimmick
4. Lack of time to learn
5. Pressure to conform to VLE
6. Availability of software, hardware
• No distinction here between two groups
• Some saw problems as politically based (institutional strategies,
resourcing)
• Few saw problems in making sense of technologies in relation to
learning and teaching
• Everyone in study had persisted with using new technologies

19. Examples of ideas offered for encouraging adoption
• Showcases, demonstrations,
workshops/training – show it is relevant
and useful to improve experience of
teaching and learning for both students
and teachers • No obvious distinction
• Guest speakers in best practice
• Contact with experienced colleagues,
between our two groups
buddying, coaching
• Sharing student feedback
• Strategies focus on
• Shadowing those with experience pedagogic beliefs,
• Team-working
• Focussing on pedagogic gains (student
perceived usefulness, role
motivation etc) modelling (how),
• Enthusing and encouraging
• Time to play (sandpits) experimentation, reward,
• Senior manager commitment access to resource,
• Adopting technologies for peer
assessment and feedback promoting awareness,
• Using less jargon-ridden language
• Relating adoption to promotion/career
mainstreaming
paths/staff review
• Small project funding
• Celebrating achievements,
encouragement of scholarship

20. A touch more literature
• A more complicated • Liao and Lu (2008)
picture than we thought discuss TAM and
• Technology Acceptance alternates and derive
Model “relative advantage”
and “compatibility” as
drivers to new
technologies adoption
by teachers
• Compatibility? With
beliefs, values, teaching
philosophy…..

21. So how can we better analyse the different
responses of academics in relation to TEL?

22. So how can we better analyse the different
responses of academics in relation to TEL?
• By teaching beliefs? Pedagogies in practice? student,
teaching and content-centred (Greener 2008)
• By discipline? Becher and Trowler (1989) work on academic
tribes
• By sub-discipline, including hard/soft, urban/rural,
convergent/divergent and pure/applied focus? (Trowler
2009)
• By internet use? Peripherals, normatives, all-rounders and
active participants? (Eynon 2009)
• Are Eynon’s “active participants” similar to Drent and
Meelissen’s “personal entrepreneurs” (2008)?
• Could other academic groupings be distinguished by skill
sets (Deursen & van Dyk 2009)

23. Which leads us to the future of this
project
• New staff engagement – action learning project
• Profile analysis of academic staff in HE in relation
to TEL.
– digital skillset
– degree of digital independence
– pedagogic beliefs
– openness to sharing and learning
• Practical application: not just focussing on
technology adopters/champions .
• We need to tread softly in the mainstream and
understand better how to meet their needs.

24. Had I the heaven's embroidered cloths,
Enwrought with golden and silver light,
The blue and the dim and the dark cloths
Of night and light and the half-light,
I would spread the cloths under your feet:
But I, being poor, have only my dreams;
I have spread my dreams under your feet;
Tread softly because you tread on my dreams.
William Butler Yeats