Considering the Laggards

New Technologies

Mod 5: While it may be safe to assume that people have positive attitudes toward experimenting with new technologies in the workplace, it may be equally safe to assume that you will encounter people in the workplace who have low self-efficacy in experimenting with new technologies. Briefly describe a situation in which you have encouraged people to use a new technology and have been met with resistance or disappointing results. What attitudes did these people exhibit? What behaviors did they demonstrate? Using Keller’s ARCS model, describe how you could change the motivation of these people, or learners, to encourage success.

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As a Technology-based Curriculum Designer working via a Title III Grant, I was charged with bringing new technologies to the campus as per the grant’s stipulation. In this case it was implementing a Learning and Assessment e-Portfolio campus-wide.

Though I was new to campus, the faculty and staff that I was working with were not new to initiatives, and they were somewhat reluctant to participate in developing e-Portfolios for students. Conversations with a number of them indicated that many technologies had been initiated, particularly with Content Management Systems only to be learned and then discarded by the university system -everyone presumed based on money. No matter what the reason, the system had changed the CMS 5 times in the last 5 years with all of the work via content that had been uploaded being lost. The e-Portfolio initiative represented a similar technology attempt.

After researching 20 or so third party e-Portfolios applications, I recommended one that was adaptable and actually already in use by one department on campus, only to have that recommendation disregarded for a an unproven product.

After signing on with the company, it became apparent that the promised deliverables were not going to be forthcoming because they were still in development -this continued throughout the time were were trying to rollout this product. Due in part to the failure of this company, all efforts eventually failed because the product was simply not designed for the use we had intended and their work toward tailoring it to our needs was not adequate. Additionally, using this particular product required a learning curve and training which we did on both a group level, and a personalized level with many forms of supplemental materials and people always available to assist faculty and students.

In the end we went with something completely familiar to faculty and students and developed a learning e-Portfolio based around Microsoft Word, providing them with a tailored template, and training students over multiple periods, providing peer trainers, demos by students with their own work as examples, giving them homework to link materials and insert pictures, and following up to be sure the students were comfortable in their skill, and the faculty happy with the results. The faculty then followed up with requiring a portfolio at the end of the semester, and we followed up with yearly Assessment Institutes where the faculty shared their successes and discussed failures, and brought in speakers to strengthen their knowledge and direct the process.

In this case, we used a humanistic approach of the use of technology and implemented a strategy that was bottom up, with the faculty being involved from the near beginning. Looking at the PSI, I would say that the approach used followed Fred Keller’s PSI model, as well as John Keller’s ARCS model.

In the case of the faculty they were motivated by a need to effectively assess project-based work, as well as address the universities AQUIP requirements for continuous improvement. Relevance and attention was assisted by the university’s need, but also by providing speakers that had positive things to say about using e-Portfolios in the universities. Confidence was built in part by the change to an application they understood (this showed we were LISTENING), and satisfaction came through follow-up conversations, sharing with others…and through students who used the e-Portfolios and acquired internships and jobs by doing so.