Submission Type
20-minute Presentation
Abstract
Faculty development at Smith College is grounded in research that has included the use of the well-known technology adoption spectrum that ranks technology adopters from laggard to innovator. Where faculty fall on this spectrum has informed our educational technology collaborations across campus. However as we used this spectrum we found that it was not a great fit with our approach and sometimes created a barrier to more creative ways of thinking about the sophistication of educational technology use. In order to gain a more nuanced understanding of faculty technology adoption at Smith, we embarked on a year-long research study called “The Landscape of Educational Technology at Smith College.” We surveyed faculty about their technology use in teaching and conducted follow-up focus groups that explored where faculty placed themselves on the technology spectrum and why. One of our main findings was that the traditional educational technology spectrum did not apply to our cultural context. In fact, this study allowed us to disrupt the linear nature of this spectrum and develop what we call a “recipe” model of understanding technology use. In this model, the sophistication of the outcome is a direct result of the combination of technology and pedagogy - allowing for a broader range of faculty to be viewed as (and to view themselves as) technologically sophisticated – even when the tools themselves are not. In this session we will share the results of our study (which reached 47% of our faculty and spanned 22 academic departments) and practical examples of how these data allowed us to develop a more meaningful faculty development plan. We will also discuss how disrupting the linear technology spectrum has become an essential part of our work and of our “recipe” model.
Session
Technology Adoption & Faculty Development, Presentation
Start Date
5-18-2016 2:00 PM
End Date
5-18-2016 3:15 PM
Disrupting the Technology Adoption Spectrum: Thinking Creatively about Faculty Technology Use
Faculty development at Smith College is grounded in research that has included the use of the well-known technology adoption spectrum that ranks technology adopters from laggard to innovator. Where faculty fall on this spectrum has informed our educational technology collaborations across campus. However as we used this spectrum we found that it was not a great fit with our approach and sometimes created a barrier to more creative ways of thinking about the sophistication of educational technology use. In order to gain a more nuanced understanding of faculty technology adoption at Smith, we embarked on a year-long research study called “The Landscape of Educational Technology at Smith College.” We surveyed faculty about their technology use in teaching and conducted follow-up focus groups that explored where faculty placed themselves on the technology spectrum and why. One of our main findings was that the traditional educational technology spectrum did not apply to our cultural context. In fact, this study allowed us to disrupt the linear nature of this spectrum and develop what we call a “recipe” model of understanding technology use. In this model, the sophistication of the outcome is a direct result of the combination of technology and pedagogy - allowing for a broader range of faculty to be viewed as (and to view themselves as) technologically sophisticated – even when the tools themselves are not. In this session we will share the results of our study (which reached 47% of our faculty and spanned 22 academic departments) and practical examples of how these data allowed us to develop a more meaningful faculty development plan. We will also discuss how disrupting the linear technology spectrum has become an essential part of our work and of our “recipe” model.