Date of Award

2007-05-01

Degree Name

EdD Doctor of Education

Dissertation Committee

Marcie J. Bober, PhD; Viviana Alexandrowicz, PhD; Cathie J. Atkins, PhD

Keywords

Concerns-Based Adoption Model--CBAM, enhancing learning, faculty development, higher education, innovation, instructional technologies, levels of use, public universities, quality of the implementation, technology, university instructors

Abstract

For over a decade, theorists have suggested that higher education institutions are in the midst of a shift from an emphasis on student access to instruction to student success in learning. Digital technologies are one “lever” increasingly touted as a means to improve teaching and learning in higher education. Because serious efforts at technology integration not only require competence with the technologies, but also often result in changes to instructional methods, colleges and universities are urged to consider faculty development needs. This study detailed how instructor change unfolded in response to a faculty development program intended to enhance the use of instructional technologies at a large public university in the southwestern United States. The program was designed to enable faculty to adopt the innovation of using advanced technologies: (a) for instructional design/planning/delivery and (b) as a tool supporting students’ ability to research, organize, visualize, manage, evaluate, and communicate information. The study was grounded by the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM), first proposed by Hall, Wallace, and Dossett in 1973. CBAM is a widely-used framework that allowed the researcher to assess faculty response to the innovation in three different ways: • concerns about the innovation (assessed via the Stages of Concern Questionnaire), • levels of use of the innovation (assessed via the Levels of Use interview), and • quality of the implementation of the innovation (assessed via the Innovation Configurations methodology). From the first two measurement strategies, the researcher generated overall CBAM profiles for faculty participants. These profiles represented a range of faculty change patterns and informed selection of a sample group for Innovation Configurations assessment and intense retrospective interviewing based on the Critical Incident Technique, developed by Flanagan in 1954, for triangulating and clarifying the CBAM findings. Findings from this study will be useful for launching and sustaining future faculty development efforts, and thus point to strategies that can improve the undergraduate experience. CBAM studies are most often conducted at the K-12 level; this study also provides recommendations for the use of the methodology in higher education

Document Type

Dissertation: Open Access

Department

Education

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