Sue Waters

Yesterday for my post series on use the of Web 2.0 with students I highlighted our preconceived notions on our digital natives ability to use technology. Today I want to talk about how truly totally frustrating students can be when you do use technology, and why they react this way!

As an educator we all have sessions that we spend hours preparing for only to have it all not quite go as planned, and students saying loudly THIS IS CRAP!! in simple terms all our hard work turns to SHIT. We grin, clean ourselves up, bathes our wounds and say thank goodness that is over next time I will do it differently! And when it is just one class we cope.

Unfortunately when it comes to using technology for elearning, we will often plan to use it for several classes, possibility the whole course, so it is much harder to cope with when students say THIS IS CRAP! And trust me, it does not matter what you are doing is, some will say it, and does get on your nerves.

So here are some tips from my e-learning leadership project, which help me cope when facilitating professional development, that also help me understand why some students automatic response will always be THIS IS CRAP!

Impact of Change

Whenever we ask someone to do something differently we are asking them to change, to let go of the familiar, to trust you in where you are taking them and what you are doing. The students are used to doing it one way, now you are saying lets try it another way!

GUESS WHAT–not everyone want to change! Familiar is known, comfortable and secure. Change is uncharted water; many people’s natural and rational response is resistance. Emotionally change can simultaneously bring joy and sorrow, gain and loss, satisfaction and disappointment.

Understand that when a student says THIS IS CRAP it may be their automatic response mechanism to the change, and trust me, it always seems to be the same student(s) regardless of what you are asking them to do (they do it to any change e.g. when shown another way to feed fish).

If a person is resisting change do make time to discuss their feelings as they may have very valid reasons and make the effort to learn more about the impact of change on people because it will help manage resistance to change better!

Adoption of Innovation

Roger’s Innovation Adoption Curve is a model often used to explain the uptake of technology within an organisation. So people involved in facilitating professional development use it as away of identify people who are more likely to engage in the use of technology.

However I think this model is also valuable when using technology with students because this model is meant to apply to any population. In simple terms Rogers model classifies adopters of innovations into various categories, based on the idea that certain individuals are inevitably more open to adaptation than others.

A person’s innovation adoption characteristic affects the rate of uptake of an innovation over time.

Roger’s categories are:

• Innovators (2.5 %)
• Early Adopters (13.5 %)
• Early Majority (34 %)
• Late Majority (34 %)
• Laggards (16 %)

Every population is made up of these groups so if you have a class of 20 students:

• 3.5 students will be innovators and early adopters; they are easier to convinc e to innova te. They are typically techies and they eat, sleep, and drink tech.
• 13 students will be mainstream adopters (early and late majority who make up 64 % of any population); are less into technology, will buy into the innovation for different reasons and need a different level of support from early adopters
• 3.5 students will be late majority and laggards; you will struggle with students because they are skeptics or set in their way and will only embrace when the others have

Remember that different adopter groups buy into innovation for different reasons and have different expectations. What works with an early adopter does not work for the mainstream and the other way around.

So remember the innovators and early adopters will embrace the easiest but to make it work you need to get the mainstream adopters to buy in because they represent the majority.

FINAL NOTE

Yes, there are a lot of other reasons why students say THIS IS CRAP these are just some of them!