What Discourages Students from Engaging with Innovative Instructional Methods: Creating a Barrier Framework
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What Discourages Students from Engaging with Innovative Instructional Methods: Creating a Barrier Framework Donna E. Ellis
# Springer Science+Business Media New York 2014
Abstract When faculty members choose to implement instructional methods that are learning-centred, this may represent a change for students; and some resist engaging. In this exploratory case study research, 172 students shared what discourages them from being willing to engage with these innovative methods that aim to facilitate their learning. Questionnaire and interview responses revealed eight key themes that are used to create a comprehensive barrier framework, and comparative analyses assist in reducing the findings. A fishbone diagram provides a possible planning tool for practitioners, and theoretical connections to the Reasoned Action Approach model are explored to further distill the findings. Keywords course innovation . student resistance . learning-centred teaching . reasoned action approach When faculty members choose teaching or assessment methods that are new or not expected by students in the context of a course, they are, from the perspective of their students, imposing an instructional innovation. From the diffusion of innovation literature, an innovation is something that is “perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption” (Rogers, 2003, p.12). This definition fits with previous work within higher education where an instructional innovation is “an instructional idea, technique, content, or process which is new to the adopting individual or group” (Abedor & Sachs, 1978, p.3). By the time students reach higher education, very few instructional methods may be brand new to them; but, when methods are not ones they would expect in certain types of courses (e.g., discussions in math courses), they may also be perceived as new. Therefore, an instructional method – whether a teaching method or an assessment method – may be perceived as innovative by students when they have never experienced it before or they did not expect to encounter it in a particular course. A current example of new or unexpected methods in higher education would be learningcentred methods that fit within Barr and Tagg’s (1995) Learning Paradigm: methods that Donna Ellis is the Director of the Centre for Teaching Excellence at the University of Waterloo, Ontario, Canada. She has a Ph.D. in management sciences from the University of Waterloo and is both a practitioner and researcher in the field of educational development. Areas of special interest include the theories and practice of change management and organizational culture. She may be contacted at [email protected]. D. Ellis (*) Centre for Teaching Excellence, EV1, University of Waterloo, 200 University Avenue West, Waterloo N2L 3G1 Ontario, Canada e-mail: [email protected]
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promote students being more involved in and responsible for their learning than they would be in traditional lecture-and-exam format courses. Christensen Hughes and Mighty (2010) argued that learning-ce
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