The focus of this course is an in-depth analysis of innovation development and adoption processes in educational organizations, including schools, universities, and training centers.
Reflection
Diffusion of Educational Innovations completely opened my mind to the progression of the adoption of innovations. I learned so much throughout this course that I had never stopped to think about previously. I was able to immediately apply what I was learning in this course to what was going on in my own school. One example of this was the creation of a Diffusion Network where I was able to identify opinion leaders within my school and hypothesize the possible success of the implementation of an innovation within that network. I enjoyed discussing the categories of innovation adopters with my classmates and was able to begin identifying colleagues who fell into certain categories. (I may or may not have been looked at strangely when I referred to a co-worker as a laggard when she failed to find value in a new student behavior management system our school implemented and refused to use it.)
The course culminated in the creation of a Concerns-Based Adoption Model which related to the content we had already been covering but in a different way. The CBAM project provided a perspective that enabled me to visualize how to facilitate the change towards implementing Computer Science in my elementary school (the focus of my CBAM). The CBAM project brought to light some of the concerns participants had while adopting the innovation. I felt like the Stages of Concern Interviews helped me understand some of the issues the early adopters were concerned about as well as explaining why some of the late adopters were choosing to wait to implement the innovation.