Wednesday, August 10, 2011

Week 5 Blog

Describe a situation in which you have encouraged people to use a new technology and have been met with resistance or disappointing results.

Two years ago my principal asked me to train the middle and high school ELA teachers on using the ELA program Teenbiz. Teenbiz is an online program that generates a new article each day that the student reads, answers questions on, and submits a short essay. I used this program primarily for my special education students  and they loved it and were reaching more gains in reading comprehension by doing it. The teachers were hesitant about the program because they were worried about learning to use the program themselves and they did not want to teach their class to use it. I conducted a three day, afternoon only training and they did not truly comply and "buy" into it until the second day. It took some time and much work but eventually they began to love the program and the students loved it as well.

What attitudes did these people exhibit?

They were angry about having to attend the trainings or use the program. They were resentful because they had to change their lesson plans to adapt to this program. Lastly, they were uninterested in the idea of incorporating the program.

What behaviors did they demonstrate?

They complained about having to use the program and voiced their opinions about how unfair it was that they were being forced to attend and comply. The teachers were at times unfocused because they did not see the usefulness of the program. On the flip side, as the training continued they became more compliant and even began to enjoy the program.

Use Keller's ARCS model, describe how you could change the motivation of these people.

I would incorporate activities that allowed the teachers to feel successful while learning the new material. I would also find activities that showed the success level we could achieve by using this program.

1 comment:

  1. Brandi, while I think your strategies for using ARCS principles seem reasonable, I've found that some people will simply resist simply because they perceive it being forced upon them. I wonder if you could overcome this by engineering some type of discovery-learning approach. If you begin with the problem (consistent with ARCS) and get them to invest in solving the problem, they might be more likely to be more involved and open to the solution.

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