Identifying Faculty Adopters of Educational Innovations: Early Adopters vs. Early Majority, Lecture notes of Voice

Download Identifying Faculty Adopters of Educational Innovations: Early Adopters vs. Early Majority and more Lecture notes Voice in PDF only on Docsity! University of Nebraska - Lincoln DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln Student Research Projects, Dissertations, and Theses - Chemistry Department Chemistry, Department of 12-2017 Applying the Diffusion of Innovation Theory to Characterize STEM Faculty Attending Professional Development Programs Dihua Xue University of Nebraska-Lincoln, dxue2@huskers.unl.edu Follow this and additional works at: http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/chemistrydiss Part of the Other Chemistry Commons This Article is brought to you for free and open access by the Chemistry, Department of at DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. It has been accepted for inclusion in Student Research Projects, Dissertations, and Theses - Chemistry Department by an authorized administrator of DigitalCommons@University of Nebraska - Lincoln. Xue, Dihua, "Applying the Diffusion of Innovation Theory to Characterize STEM Faculty Attending Professional Development Programs" (2017). Student Research Projects, Dissertations, and Theses - Chemistry Department. 87. http://digitalcommons.unl.edu/chemistrydiss/87 Applying the Diffusion of Innovation Theory to Characterize STEM Faculty Attending Professional Development Programs by Dihua Xue A THESIS Presented to the Faculty of The Graduate College at the University of Nebraska In Partial Fulfillment of Requirements For the Degree of Master of Science Major: Chemistry Under the supervision of Professor Marilyne Stains Lincoln, Nebraska December 2017 iv ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS I would like to thank my advisor Prof. Marilyne Stains for the opportunity to work on this research project. For being such a great mentor who guided me through the entire process, I really appreciate the probing questions she asked whenever I came with problems, which led me to think thoroughly. Instead of just telling me the right or wrong answer, she helped me identify the gap in my understandings and walked me through with details and examples. I would also like to thank Dr. Trisha Vickrey, Dr. Jordan Harshman, Dr. Robert Erdmann and Dr. Jonathan Velasco for their feedback, comments and suggestions from the data analysis to the paper writing. I feel so grateful to have their devoted time and valuable input. Table of Contents ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS ............................................................................................ iv CHAPTER 1 Introduction ................................................................................................1 CHAPTER 2 Theoretical Framework and Research Questions ...................................3 2.1 Theoretical Framework ........................................................................................3 2.1.1 Rogers’ Types of Adopters ..........................................................................3 2.1.2 Rogers’ Innovation-decision Process ..........................................................4 2.1.3 Rogers’ Five Attributes of Innovations .......................................................4 2.2 Research Questions ...............................................................................................5 CHAPTER 3 Methods .......................................................................................................6 3.1 Participants .............................................................................................................6 3.2 Two EBIPs-Focused Workshop Series ...............................................................6 3.3 Data Collected ........................................................................................................7 3.4 Data Analysis ..........................................................................................................7 CHAPTER 4 Results........................................................................................................10 4.1 Types of Adopters ................................................................................................10 4.2 Features of Instructional Innovation Relate to Adoption Progress ................18 4.3 Features of Instructional Innovation Relate to Type of Adopters ..................21 CHAPTER 5 Discussion ..................................................................................................26 5.1 What are the Types of Adopters? .......................................................................26 5.2 How do the Features of the Instructional Innovations Matter? ......................27 CHAPTER 6 Conclusions and Implications..................................................................30 CHAPTER 7 Limitations ................................................................................................31 APPENDIX A ...................................................................................................................32 APPENDIX B ...................................................................................................................34 REFERENCES .................................................................................................................36 1 CHAPTER 1 Introduction Calls to reform instructional practices in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) fields at the undergraduate level has increased in the United States over the past decades.1–6 These calls primarily came from observations that results from Discipline-based Education Research (DBER) had limited impact on classroom practices.2,7 In particular, there is a realization that instructional practices that emerged from this work – often called evidence-based instructional practices (EBIPs) since empirical studies have demonstrated that they have positive impact on students’ conceptual understandings and attitudes toward STEM – have not propagated on a wide scale. Much attention has been dedicated to investigating the circumstances behind the low uptake of EBIPs. Studies in physics and chemistry have demonstrated that short workshops are effective at raising awareness of these practices, which is a fundamental step for uptake.8–11 Several studies have focused their attention on the identification of factors that inhibit or promote the uptake of EBIPS. For example, Henderson and Dancy 2007 who surveys over 700 physics instructors across the country found that faculty perceived factors mostly outside the control of the instructors (e.g. classroom size, content coverage, etc.) to be major impediments to implementation. Brownell and Tanner 2012 pointed out the tensions between scientists’ professional identity and the pedagogical change. Essentially, how professors view themselves and their work within their disciplines and how they define their professional status can be critical to the 4 comfortable with traditional approaches and are resistant to make changes in terms of adopting an innovation.16 In this study, we categorized workshop participants into the different types of adopters. 2.1.2 Rogers’ Innovation-decision Process Having laid out a typology for the various kinds of adopters, Rogers also described the process of decision-making in response to an innovation. This innovation- decision model involves five sequential stages: knowledge, persuasion, decision, implementation and confirmation. Knowledge is the stage when individuals become aware of an innovation and begin to understand how it works. Persuasion stage is where individuals shape their attitudes either favorable or unfavorable toward an innovation. After attitude is formed, decisions will be made on whether to adopt the innovation or reject it, so called the decision stage. This is followed by the implementation stage; in this stage, individuals test the innovation. The last stage is confirmation, during which individuals wrap up their thoughts and experience with the innovation and finally confirm whether they want to adopt the innovation for the long term. Rogers defined this innovation-decision process as “an uncertainty reduction process”.16 In other words, the less uncertainty people hold, the more likely they will adopt an innovation. In this study, we look at the differences in workshop participants’ progression through this process for two different EBIPs. 2.1.3 Rogers’ Five Attributes of Innovations Finally, the likelihood that a participant will successfully adopt an innovation depends on attributes of the innovation as perceived by the potential adopters. The five attributes of innovations are relative advantage, compatibility, complexity, trialability and 5 observability. How individuals perceive the attributes of an innovation affect its rate of adoption. Relative advantage is the advantage that an innovation has when compared with other approaches it supersedes. Compatibility shows how well the innovation can resonate with individuals’ existing believes and values. The greater the compatibility, the less uncertainties individuals will hold. Complexity refers to the relative difficulties for individuals to understand and use the innovation. An increase in difficulty will make the adoption less likely to happen. Trialability is how easily an innovation can be tested. Observability is the extent to which results of the implementation of the innovation are visible to others. Rogers also discussed the relations between trialability and types of adopters.16 Relatively earlier adopters tend to place greater value on trialability than late adopters since most of them are the pioneers who tend to try things out. In this study, we applied this model to the two-different innovative instructional strategies taught within two different professional development programs to explore how their distinctive features’ impact adoption decisions. 2.2 Research Questions The three components of Rogers’ theory described above help us address the following three research questions: i. What are the types of adopters attending two semester-long professional development workshops, each focused on one specific instructional innovation? ii. To what extent do the features of the instructional innovations relate to adopters’ progress on the innovation decision process? iii. To what extent do the features of the instructional innovations relate to the types of adopters? 6 CHAPTER 3 Methods The aim of this study is to characterize the types of adopters who attended EBIPs-focused workshops and the extent to which the instructional innovations appeal to certain types of adopters and impact progress along the innovation-decision process. 3.1 Participants Study participants were STEM faculty from a Midwestern public research university, who participated in two different professional development programs. 49 of the 69 (71%) workshop participants volunteered to participate in this study. Three of the 49 faculty took both workshops simultaneously. 3.2 Two EBIPs-Focused Workshop Series Peer Instruction and Just-in-Time Teaching are the two EBIPs targeted in the workshop series. Each EBIP had its own workshop series, which consisted of 8 1.5-hr meetings spread throughout a semester. Study participants came from the first four offerings of these workshop series. Peer Instruction is intended to promote deep conceptual understanding and help students alleviate misconceptions.17 Instructors pose a conceptual question in multiple- choice formats and have students vote individually through a personal classroom response system. Depending on the degree to which students understand the concept, instructors can either: allow students to discuss the concept and revote; or else provide brief explanations and move on to other content.18 9 The degree to which faculty perceived their departmental chairs’ and colleagues’ attitudes toward alternative teaching practices can be divided into low, medium and high. We use the term “peer pressure”, where low peer pressure corresponds to low departmental expectations to use EBIPs or active learning strategies. Individuals who showed enthusiasm for early implementation, even though they perceived that the majority of their colleagues did not value the innovative strategies, fit into early adopter or early majority type. On the other side, we classified individuals who maintained a traditional way of teaching practice in a department with high peer pressure as late majority. By following the designed coding rubric, one researcher coded each profile and two others double-checked for consistency. The Pre-survey used two open-ended questions to gain perspectives on the motives and expectations workshop attendees had about their participation in the workshop series (See APPENDIX A). We read the open-ended answers, memoed each and developed codes iteratively. We then looked for patterns into the code developed. The following five themes emerged as a result of this iterative process: 1) self-efficacy (e.g. enhance confidence in teaching); 2) teaching community (e.g. engage with other instructors); 3) enhancement of students’ experience; 4) desire to change their current teaching and 5) to learn new information, knowledge and/or methods (See APPENDIX B). We employed the same analytical strategy to identify participants’ perceived barriers to implementation of the EBIPs. Themes that emerged were 1) structural barriers, 2) time management, 3) mechanics of the strategy, 4) student concerns, and 5) no difficulties expected (See APPENDIX B). 10 CHAPTER 4 Results 4.1 Types of Adopters From the analysis of the data emerged the need to split early majority into two sub-categories as early majority with early adopter traits and early majority with late majority traits. As indicated in Table 2, we combined early adopters with early majority with early adopter traits into one category (early adopter traits) and early majority with late majority traits with late majority to form the late majority traits group. A major distinction that assisted in categorization of early adopter vs. early majority with early adopter traits is leadership, which is an exclusive feature for early adopter. This classification helped us capture more nuances in the type of adopters while providing sufficient sample size in each main category to gain more meaningful insight. Indication of implementation of the EBIP on the Pre-survey distinguishes early majority with early adopter traits from early majority. We also classified individuals who were undecided about the implementation as early majority with late majority traits; this feature differentiated early majority with late majority traits from early majority, who were likely to implementation the strategies. We also considered a new classification called non-adopters, for faculty members who never implemented the innovative strategy. In particular, two of them reported not having proper teaching contexts, while the rest didn’t provide Follow-up surveys to help us draw conclusions about their level of implementation and had still not implemented the strategy on the Post survey. Finally, the theory clearly indicated that we would not found Innovators in our pool of participants. 11 These modifications to Rogers’ theory along with representative examples from the participants are shown in Table 2. 14 Figure 1. Type of adopters in total (N=49) 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% Early adopter traits Early majority Late majority traits Non-adopters P er ce n t o f fa cu lt y Types of Adopters (N=49) 15 As each adopter type has unique features, it can be interesting to see whether their reasons and expectations for workshop attendance are distinguishable (See in Figure 2). When asked why they were attending the workshops, the two main reasons provided were desire to learn new information or gain new knowledge about teaching and an interest in changing their current practices. However, nuances in what they wanted to change were observed by category of adopters. For example, 33% of those with early adopter traits expressed an interest in learning or improving the implementations of EBIPs. As one noted: “I have started to do Peer instruction and want to know how to do more”. On the contrary, 91% of early majority adopters cared about general development and enhancement of instructional practices and approaches: “I wanted an opportunity for professional development and to improve my teaching or at least have another avenue for evaluating my teaching.” Interestingly, late majority were primarily interested in changing their practice (83%). Expectations on what participants hoped to gain from the workshop series were not always aligned with their reasons for attending the workshop series. For example, learning new information or gaining new knowledge about teaching was mentioned to the same extent as a reason and an expectation of their participation by early adopter traits and early majority traits; however, this was mentioned more often as an expectation than a reason for late majority traits. There was also an increasing misalignment for “to change their current teaching practices” between reason and expectation from early adopter traits to late majority traits. In particular, there was a decrease of 14% for early adopter traits, 25% for early majority and 33% for late majority traits between the frequency of mentions of “to change their current teaching practices” as a reason versus 16 an expectation. This indicates that more skeptical adopters have lower expectation for the impact of their participation in the workshop series on their teaching. Interestingly, the late majority traits were the main group that expected the workshop series to enhance their teaching self-efficacy. Finally, early adopter traits showed greater interest in using the workshop series as a mean to be engaged in a teaching community than other types of adopters; here is an excerpt from one of the early adopter traits: “In addition to acquiring new tools, I look forward to discussing challenges within education in the STEM fields with other faculty.” It is notable that a desire to enhance the students’ experience in the classroom was not a significant motivation for any of the adopter types. 19 Figure 3. Short-term innovation-decision process Figure 4. Long-term innovation-decision process 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Pre Post Pre Post PI (N=21) JiTT (N=24) P er ce n t o f p a rt ic ip a n ts Short-term progression (Matched data) Confirmation Implementation Positive decision Awareness Unawareness 0% 20% 40% 60% 80% 100% Pre Post Follow-up Pre Post Follow-up PI (N=11) JiTT (N=14) P er ce n t o f p a rt ic ip a n ts Long-term progression (Matched data) Confirmation Implementation Positive decision Awareness Unawareness 20 The short-term (difference between Pre and Post surveys) and the long-term progresses (difference between Pre, Post and Follow-up surveys) are presented in Figure 3 and 4 respectively. The Pre data indicates that participants started the workshop programs at different stages of the innovation-decision process. In both workshop series, there were participants who had never heard of the EBIP being taught and participants who were already implementing them. Although both workshop series had a similar number of participants at the implementation stage at the beginning of the workshop (29% for PI and 21% for JiTT), a higher proportion of PI workshop participants were at the awareness stage than the JiTT participants, 38% versus 25% respectively (Figure 3 and 4). Analyses of the short and long-term progressions show that participants in the two different workshop series also moved at a different pace along the innovation-decision process. As Figure 3 indicates, 38% of the PI participants were at the implementation stage by the end of the workshop series versus 21% for JiTT. The Follow-up data show that 82% of the PI participants who responded to all three surveys (11 total) were passed the trial stage and had committed to the integration of PI in their practices. This rate was larger than the JiTT workshop series with only 64% of the participants at the confirmation stage. However, another 21% of the JiTT participants were testing the strategy one year after their workshop participation. In conclusion, although workshop participants were less familiar with JiTT than PI, the JiTT workshop series was able to move its participants to a similar level of implementation when compared to the PI workshop but the progress was slower than it was for PI. 21 4.3 Features of Instructional Innovations Relate to Type of Adopters When relating adopter types to different innovative instructional strategies (PI or JiTT), the distribution between the two strategies turns out to be different. As is shown in Figure 5 and 6, the largest number of PI adopters showed early adopter traits, while in JiTT the largest group was early majority. The second largest groups were early majority (PI) and late majority (JiTT). When we looked at the reasons for attending the workshop series, 89% of the PI participants indicated that they wanted to change their teaching practices versus 56% for JiTT participants (See in Figure 7). The second reason which was equally mentioned in both workshop series was learning new information, knowledge, and/or methods (50% of the participants in both workshop series mentioned it). There was a clear misalignment between reasons and expectations for the PI series. A third of the participants who identified changing their practices as a reason for attending did not mention it as an expectation of the workshop series. This misalignment was present with the JiTT series but to a much smaller extent (17%). 24 Finally, we were also interested in characterizing whether differences between the two workshop series existed in the nature of the barriers to implementation participants expected. Figure 8 reports how perceived barriers were related to different instructional innovations. “Mechanics of the strategy”, for example, writing good questions and incorporating the methodology into their ongoing practices, is a major concern for both PI and JiTT participants. JiTT participants perceived more time management issues than PI participants, while PI participants raised more concerns over students’ engagement and participation. One JiTT participant who raised a few typical concerns when implementing JiTT described the following: “Designing effective JiTT questions, especially ones that can be used in subsequent semester. Two related problems. I tend not to teach the same course repeatedly. Even when I repeat the same course, one can cover the same fundamentals in many different ways; I rarely teach courses the same way from year to year. Will the JiTT prep time become overwhelming? Time management in the classroom will be a problem for me or should I say exacerbate the problem for me”. 25 Figure 8. Perceived barriers regarding to type of instructional innovations 0% 10% 20% 30% 40% 50% 60% PI (N=21) JiTT (N=25) P e rc e n t o f fa cu lt y Perceived Barriers by Type of Innovation Structural barriers Time management Mechanics of the strategy Student concerns No difficulties 26 CHAPTER 5 Discussion This study analyzed faculty members who attended two pedagogical workshop series focused on two different EBIPs. Rogers’ theory of Diffusion of Innovations was leveraged to categorize the study participants in terms of their decisions toward innovation adoption. We found that different instructional innovations appeal to different faculty participants, and that this has an impact on the pace of adoption. 5.1 What Are the Types of Adopters? Rogers’ types of adopter model help frame the categories of workshop participants in this study. Early majority is one of the major types in Rogers’ model, however, we found some discrepancies in early majority among our study participants. We have a number of early majority who had implemented the EBIPs before the workshops, but showing no signs of being leaders; we thus created a new category early majority with early adopter traits. In contrary, another group of participants among early majority who indicated their concerns and hesitations toward implementing EBIPs are captured as early majority with late majority traits. We assigned subtypes within early majority for better capturing the nuances among the workshop participants. In terms of the distribution of different adopters, early adopter traits, which includes early adopters and early majority with early adopter traits, and early majority were the dominant groups in our sample, while in Rogers’ model, early and late majority are the two major types. Rogers’ model applies to the whole population of potential adopters. However, in our study, we only have a sub-sample of the population: all the 29 Two widely perceived barriers in JiTT are “mechanics of the strategy” (e.g. difficulties on finding/writing good questions, etc.) and “time management” in terms of analyzing student responses and using the results information to shape the class. This aligns with the findings of “time constraints” and “instructional challenges” that other studies identified for faculty adoption of EBIPs.15,21 The results also resonate with a fact that complexity of a strategy is related to how fast potential adopters will do the uptake. PI and JiTT participants reported that a desire to change current teaching practices and interest in learning new information as the two major reasons and expectations associated with attendance at the workshop. Our study results (See Figure 7) show that, within each strategy, there is a gap between reasons and its corresponding expectations. The most frequently mentioned reason (10 participants) -for attending the PI workshop was a desire to enhance current instructional practices. However, only two people kept the enhancement as their expectations. The two people who aligned their reasons with expectations are from the type of early adopter traits. No further information can help to explain why expectations are lower than reasons, which need further research exploration. 30 CHAPTER 6 Conclusions and Implications We identified four types of adopters among the study participants based on Rogers’ Diffusion of Innovation theory. Early adopters traits and early majority were the two dominant categories, indicating that most faculty members who voluntarily attended the workshops held positive attitudes toward the EBIP targeted in the workshop series and implemented it eventually. We also found that features of EBIPs had an impact on how faculty participants moved through the innovation-decision process. The EBIP with less complexity and more trialability tended to be adopted more quickly. Taken together, the results of this study have important implications for professional development facilitators. First, this study demonstrates that different types of adopters attend professional development programs. Characterizing and leveraging the type of adopters present in the group of participants can enhance the effectiveness of the program and increase adoption. For example, early adopters can help those people who hold concerns and hesitations toward adoptions like late majority. Moreover, the need for each group of adopters can be targeted during the professional development program. The study also highlights that not all EBIPs can be taught the same way and that it is important to take into consideration their characteristics and focus on those that are likely to be considered as barriers to adoption. 31 CHAPTER 7 Limitations Small sample size is one issue that exists in the current study, which makes it harder for us to report any statistical significance within our findings. Nevertheless, few studies have looked at the characteristics of potential adopters through Rogers’ Innovation Diffusion model to figure out the slow uptake of innovative instructions. This study relied on self-reported surveys. Although self-report of teaching practices is a common and popular evaluation method,22 it may not be utterly accurate.23 Yet, if designed questionnaires can look through the lens from more than one perspective, it can still lead to the right direction. In this study for example, some faculty claimed to be aware of the strategy before attending the workshop. However, the reasons they provided for attending the workshops revealed that they had little knowledge about the EBIPs which made us realize they were actually at unawareness knowledge stage. 34 APPENDIX B Reasons, Expectations and Perceived Barriers for Attending the Workshops Why did you apply to the Scientific Teaching workshop? What do you expect to gain out of your participation in the workshop? Integrated responses Codes To enhance confidence in teaching Self-efficacy To engage in a teaching community Teaching community To enhance students’ learning To enhance students' experience To enhance students’ engagement To improve current implementation of EBIPs To change their current teaching To learn how to implement EBIPs To learn how to implement teaching methods To enhance current instructional practices To develop an effective instructional approach To develop interactive instructional practices To learn about EBIPs (research, theory, practice) To learn new information, knowledge and/or methods To evaluate the fit of new teaching methods with one’s own teaching To learn about teaching To learn about teaching methods To expand knowledge of assessment strategies 35 What do you anticipate to be the main difficulties in the implementation of the strategy? Integrated responses Codes Class design/infrastructure limitation Inappropriate teaching context Structural barriers Finding/writing good questions Managing student responses/answers Planning class How much time taken up during the class In general Time management Difficulty writing or finding questions/resources Processing student responses/answers in real time Difficulty incorporating with current practices Pacing change over time Mechanics of the strategy Concern over student engagement/participation Cause of student engagement/participation Students’ attitudes toward EBIPs Student concerns No difficulties No difficulties 36 REFERENCES (1) Rothman, F.; Narum, J. Then, Now, & in the Next Decade: A Commentary on Strengthening Undergraduate Science, Mathematics, Engineering and Technology Education. 1999. (2) Singer, S. R.; Nielsen, N. R.; Schweingruber, H. A. Discipline-Based Education Research; 2012. (3) National Science Foundation. 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