Will a potential Innovation Fly? H807 3:2

Here are some concepts that may be useful as I consider introducing innovations to our Excellence Distance Learning Programme.

Relative Advantage: What problem is it that the innovation is required to solve, and do colleagues share my view of what we are seeking to improve? Whatever innovation I recommend must be seen by others to offer a benefit commensurate with the effort that will be required.

Compatibility: This is likely to be a major factor for my very experienced colleagues when faced with an elearning innovation. Their sense of self is connected strongly with their face to face practice, and the online arena is an uncomfortable fit for them. I think it will be important to introduce changes progressively, enabling colleagues to embrace the changes, and edging them gradually towards less compatible innovations. (ref H807)

Complexity: This must be considered both for teachers and learners.New skills and difficult concepts must be accommodated. With a disparate group of learners such as ours, complexity must be kept to a minimum. For teachers, I must be aware of new skills and structures they might require in order to be enthusiastic participants.

Trialability: Any experiments must not disadvantage the learners as we develop the programme pedagogy of our Excellence Distance Learning programme. Our version of Trialability is Quick Prototyping, and taking bite sized chunks upon which to experiment gives us access to feedback from both teachers and learners.

Observability: This takes us right back to relative advantage. We are measuring the success of our online efforts based on the extent to which learners are able to take and use what they have learned with their clients. Our current design requires learners to demonstrate what they have learned with their first client, and so far, a small proportion have taken the plunge (3 out of 15). It occurs to me that this may be too big a jump from theory into practice, and we might benefit for designing in an earlier opportunity to observe learners' progress.

Ref:
Rogers, E.M. (2003) Diffusion of Innovations (5th edn), New York, Simon and Schuster.