Two ‘Case Studies’

1. A fictitious instructor who is an amalgam of various colleagues working on a real project to illustrate the Concerns-based Adoption Model (CBAM) with respect to supporting a teacher in effectively introducing digital reference resources to students. Specifically, this example is concerned with the adoption of Open Educational Resources and Repositories (OERs).
2. An anonymous but real-life, real-work situation where I share the narrative of my work with an individual instructor as she moves through several stages of adoption of educational technologies. I relate this to the CBAM, SAMR, TPACK and TECH models of digital tech integration.

In both cases, I use CBAM Stages of Concern and Levels of Use as described by Po-Sen Huang and Alex Oris.  By using two different examples, I hope to illustrate the flexibility of the CBAM model across contexts.

CBAM and Digital Reference Resources: Open Educational Resources

Instructor X has been teaching at the post-secondary level for over 25 years. He has expertise in accessing reference resources in the library – both in the stacks and online. He recognizes the value of his students accessing online reference resources but had previously not considered that his students, once they leave the rarified world of the University, would no longer have access to the wealth of resources to continue their learning. X was at the Awareness stage of concern and was, typically, taking no action at the time (Non-use level).

I was meeting with X to discuss some potential course collaborations and, coincidentally, had just returned from a seminar put on by the campus library about Open Education. I was excited to share what I’d learned about OER’s (Open Ed Resources and Open Ed Repositories). Like most of my initial coaching and co-planning sessions, I began by learning more about his teaching and course objectives. I learned that X was interested in increasing student engagement in a large lecture course.

As our conversation progressed, I learned that his students were required to revise an existing lesson plan to incorporate assistive technologies in order to support varied learners – including ELL’s – as an assignment in the course. I suggested that this assignment might provide the perfect opportunity to open his student’s eyes to the world of OERs by having them prepare their lesson plans as ‘open’ resources to be shared in an Open Educational Repository. In the process of preparing for and presenting this seminar, I would be meeting my own goal of “Leading the Learning” by empowering the students as life-long learners and fostering literacies (in X and in his students!). Through a series of activities where students would need to learn about, select and apply a creative commons license (of their choosing) to their work and research, evaluate and select a repository where they might share their work, they would be developing both information literacy and digital citizenship.

X was  somewhat skeptical but open to discussing this new approach. He was rapidly shifting from Non-use to the Orientation level of Use and, at the same time, was openly asking how this was different and if it was worth all the trouble? Given that my own stage of concern with respect to OER’s was somewhere between Management and Consequence, I was thinking about the impact on students. Applying a ‘real-world’ reason for revising the lesson plan, I suggested this new approach might increase engagement and quality and also support students in moving into the emerging area of OERs. Seeing that X had entered the Personal stage of concern, I quickly reasoned that it was time to call in some support and expertise to reinforce the value of the approach I was suggesting.

When we met for a second time, X had already taken the initiative to access the resources I’d suggested. I had contacted the Center for Teaching and Learning Technology (CTLT) on campus to ask for more information about their Open Ed projects and to request assistance. A very capable expert from CTLT joined us for our next meeting. Together, we developed resources to support the students in learning about Open Ed as they created an Open Educational Resource. We are now at the Preparation stage of action. From here, I need to ensure I provide some appropriate modeling of the use and creation of open educational resources to both X and his students so that, when our collaboration is completed, he will have something upon which to build. To that end, I consolidated resources into a comprehensive blog post so that X and his students would have ongoing access to the resources we had developed.

*Here is a link to the resources we developed for the assignment.

CBAM, SAMR and more Models for Digital Tech Integration:

It was August 27, 2013, my first day as an Adjunct Teaching Professor at UBC. I had been asked to present at the Teacher Education Program Faculty Orientation at the University Golf Club. As a recent graduate of the Master of Educational Technology Program, an experienced teacher and a technology integration mentor coming from a progressive school district, I knew I could share my excitement about the possibilities of digital technology integration to help support students and even transform teaching. Still, as a brand-new faculty member, freshly seconded from my grade one/two classroom in Surrey, the risk of imposter syndrome loomed large. When I arrived at the golf course, I was lucky to see a friendly face almost immediately. The education librarian whom I’d known when I was a student in 1990 as a helpful, friendly resource person, greeted me and we connected right away. She proceeded to introduce me to faculty members around the room during morning coffee. I could feel my unease slipping away until shortly before my presentation.

“So, you’re the one who wants to make me start using technology!” came the greeting from one of the attendees, a seasoned professor of teaching. “Well, it’s not going to work. I like books. They work and they will always work. ”

My heart leapt into my throat, my palms felt clammy as I walked up to the podium to present!

While it might be easy to dismiss such an individual as a luddite or unreachable. I didn’t. I had a ‘gut feeling’ that there was an opportunity here. Today, after reading more about Hall et al’s Concerns-based Adoption Model (CBAM), I can see that her defensive stance likely meant she might actually be finding her way through the ‘Awareness’ stage of concern and was ready to make a decision as to whether she should move forward with adoption of educational technologies and, more specifically, digital reference resources (into the informational stage) or decline to adopt altogether. In my experience, there is a crucial step between non-use and orientation in the CBAM action model that acts almost as a decision tree and the well-placed mentor or supportive colleague can be the change agent who helps the individual on the early path to adoption take the road towards thoughtful adoption.

Skip ahead a year…

In our discussions about the use of digital technologies, we had walked together through the informational stage to the personal stage. I had provide her with resources and one on one coaching. She was finding reasons to consider integrating digital tech into her life and had started to contemplate how it might benefit her professional life.

We were moving from the personal stage of concern into the management and consequence stage. While a digital technology neophyte, I found that this highly experienced academic was able to recognize quickly the benefits and potential pitfalls of various ways of integrating technology. It was time to help bring her technological knowledge in line with her highly sophisticated pedagogical and content knowledge and so I introduced her to TPACK.

In so doing, I was able to leverage her Vygotskian understandings that knowledge is socially co-constructed and it was at this stage that I learned the most from my mentee. At the time, I held a great deal of practical knowledge and theoretical knowledge about digital technology integration but my subject area knowledge was less academic. For our students, pre-service teachers only just learning to apply pedagogical understandings to their content area knowledge, the TPACK model was a bit too complex. I needed to find a different approach to help them learn where they might put their energies when it came to digital tech integration in the earliest stages of their teaching careers.

I introduced them to Ruben Puentedura’s SAMR model (2006) and, rather than sharing it as a ladder, I shared it as a swimming pool (Hooker, 2013); one that we swim through at different depths depending on our needs and the needs of our students. (NB: hover over the ‘targets’ on the image below created in Thinglink)

Together, we went from the shallow end to the deep end and back as we used technologies for teacher-directed presentation and then began to introduce more collaborative pedagogies and assignments to support the students’ knowledge and product co-creation. I was able, at this point, to share the TECH model (Roberts, 2013) to reinforce my colleague’s use of Bloom’s Taxonomy and as a model of digital technology adoption favouring student creation as the goal. The benefit of the simplicity of this model was felt most keenly by our students, pre-service teachers only just developing their content knowledge and pedagogical understandings… for these students, the TPACK model was too complex.

… two years…

“I really liked that thing you did with my class last year, but I can’t remember what it was called… you know, it’s where they all posted ideas online at the same time for a brainstorm. I’d like to use it in my class this month. Can you help me set it up?”

…Three…

“Guess what, I used that Padlet wall again this spring with my class. Do you want to see it? I was wondering how I can help them see different ways to use it effectively with their own students.”

HURRAH! I am so glad I’d paid attention to my colleague, her need for “information, assistance, and moral support” during the three years it took for her “early concerns to be resolved and later ones to emerge” (from: http://www.nationalacademies.org/rise/backg4a.htm)

These question and comments came from the same individual whom I’d met that first day. I’d made it a bit of a mission to get to know this highly respected faculty member and learned a great deal from her. Initially, she agreed to meet for coffee to help me learn more about the course she coordinated. I spent a great deal of time listening and learning. She invited me to a class where I observed her teach and was able to see the great wealth of resources she shared with our students. She expressed some frustration over the use of digital technologies by students in the class and I was able to share a few strategies I’ve used to engage students ‘with’ their devices. Our discussion turned to the need for our teacher candidates to learn these strategies since they too would soon be faced with issues of technology use by their own students. It was at that point that she invited me to do a workshop with her students and she was able to observe me teach. From that point on we began to work together through a gradual release model and an “I do, we do, you do” approach.

Closing Remarks:

I have often felt the need to balance my own excitement and interest in an innovation with the objectives, wishes and interests of the teachers with whom I’m working. Applying the CBAM model not only helps me recognize the Stages of Concern and Levels of Use of my mentee, but it also helps me recognize where I am at in my own adoption of innovations. By ensuring I listen and acknowledge the expertise that each of us brings to a collaboration, I am able to honour the work and wisdom of my mentee while, at the same time, helping to enrich their practice with innovative approaches thus providing a learning environment in keeping with the needs of the 21st Century Learners referred to in Leading the Learning.

References:

Canadian School Libraries (CSL). 2018.  “Leading Learning:  Standards of Practice for School Library Learning Commons in Canada.” Available:  http://llsop.canadianschoollibraries.ca

Hall, G. E., Dirksen, D & George, A., (2006). Measuring Implementation in Schools: Levels of Use. Retrieved from: http://www.sedl.org/cbam/lou_manual_201410.pdf ISBN: 978-0-9777208-1-1.

Hooker, C. (2013). Taking a Dip in the SAMR Swimming Pool. Retrieved from https://hookedoninnovation.com/2013/12/10/taking-a-dip-in-the-samr-swimming-pool/

Puentedura, R. (2006). Transformation, Technology, and Education. Retrieved from http://hippasus.com/resources/tte/

Roberts, J. (2013). Turning SAMR into TECH. Retrieved from http://www.litandtech.com/2013/11/turning-samr-into-tech-what-models-are.html

Schrock, K. (2014). Resources to Support the SAMR Model. Retrieved from  http://www.schrockguide.net/samr.html