dissemination of innovation in an institution of tertiary education k. vassilakis,...

Dissemination of Dissemination of innovation in an institution innovation in an institution

of tertiary education of tertiary education

K. Vassilakis, [email protected]

M. Kalogiannakis, [email protected]

5th International ConferenceNEW HORIZONS IN INDUSTRY, BUSINESS AND EDUCATION (NHIBE 2007)

30 - 31 August 2007, Rhodes island, Greece

T.E.I. of Crete T.E.I. of Crete

NHIBE 2007, 30-31 August, Rhodes island

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Introduction

In our knowledge-based society institutions of tertiary education face challenges to bring up students with intellectual creativity and critical thinking ability.

ICT has been expected to improve school by changing methods of teaching.

A general goal of distance education is to create innovative environments (Turkle, 1997, Castells, 2002).

We seek to understand the process of dissemination of distant learning at TEI of Crete.


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Innovation Almost every book on innovation includes reference

to the origin of the word “innovation” as having roots from the Latin word “novus” meaning “new” and is derived into the verb “in+novare” that covers the meaning “to make something new”.

Innovation is a result of human activity and can be described as either “product” or “processes”.

Product innovations are described by Tornatzky & Fleischer (1990) as those which are ends in themselves and by Tidd et al (1997) as the things which an organization offers.

The standard definition of innovation is “the adoption of an existing idea, practice or object that is perceived as new by an individual or other unit of adoption” (Rogers, 1995).


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Dissemination

One important aspect consider dissemination as a distribution activity, planned by persons and organizations and intended to make something known or to be sent to other persons or organizations (Stokking, 1996).

Another way of understanding dissemination beyond the usual quantitative descriptions of use, is contained within Coburn’s 4 levels of innovation related to: depth, sustainability, spread, shift in reform ownership


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Innovation & Education (1/2)

Innovation in education has never been an easy task, primarily because of the conservative nature of our public education system.

Students and teachers perceive innovation as something new, although the difficulty arises during implementation of innovations which require teachers and/or students to engage in teaching and learning activities that are very different to their previous experiences.

Teaching innovation has been to increase the quality of learning, the productivity of learning, while at the same time, increasing access to learning.


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Innovation & Education (2/2) For Vargas-Vera et al (2006) it is important to

move towards a new, more flexible learning structure in which students take responsibility for their own learning and determine their learning agenda.

In current institutions of tertiary education, both distance education and traditional campus courses, relies more and more on ICT.

Typical teaching and learning “product” innovations might include web-based platforms like “e-class” studied in our previous researches.


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Distant learning at TEI of Crete (1/2)

At TEI of Crete we have developed and use systematically tele-education services since 2004.

For asynchronous teaching there are three (3) servers allowing teachers to build effective online courses and to manage learning and collaborative activities on the web.

Nowadays we are trying to assess the tele-education in order to improve the services and spread further the usage of tele-teaching facilities among the academic community.


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Distant learning at TEI of Crete (2/2)

We consider distant learning as an innovation and we examine the dissemination of this kind of innovation in an institution of tertiary education like TEI of Crete.

Based on the above theoretical framework and the results of our previous researches, we consider asynchronous teaching platform used at TEI of Crete as an innovative tool.

Platform’s users at TEI of Crete estimate that they are more active and productive in the asynchronous e-teaching environment, although they have not fully exploited it yet.


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Perspectives (1/2)

With the spread of ICT, we have to respond to a huge demand of new educational approaches and tools.

Education is undergoing several interesting changes. One of these is the usage of student centered model instead of the teacher centered one (Bermejo, 2005).

In student centered model the teaching focus is on improving the way which the students learn by it, so that they gain a deeper understanding, while teacher centered model often consider the student a passive entity.


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Perspectives (2/2)

The introduction of a technological object, on its way to becoming an innovation, can be seen as a factor of change in social practices (Cavalli, 2007).

The innovation process requires attention to the people, to what they think, to what they value, to how they behave, and to how interrelations between the actors of the process are carried on.

The future of distant learning is not in providing static content that just provide information, but lies in the power of customizing the content in order to match the learning needs of each individual learner.

It is time to build the next generation adaptive learning systems.


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References Bermejo, S. (2005), Cooperative electronic learning in virtual laboratories through forums, IEEE

Transactions on Education, 48(1), 140-149. Castells, M. (2002), The Internet Galaxy, Oxford University Press, Oxford. Cavalli, N. (2007), The Symbolic Dimension of Innovation Processes, American Behavioral Scientist,

3(50), 958-969. Coburn, C. (2003), Rethinking Scale: Moving Beyond Numbers to Deep and Lasting Change.

Educational Researcher, 32(6), 3-12. Potgieter, B. (2004), Exploring leadership and organisation for change and innovation in higher

education, Proceedings of the 2004 Annual International Conference of the Higher Education Research and Development Society of Australasia (HERDSA), 4-7 July 2004, Miri, Sarawak.

Rogers, E. (1995), Diffusion of innovations, (4th edition), The Free Press, New York. Sonwalkar, N. (2005), Future Trends in e-Learning: The Adaptive Learning Approach, Proceedings of

the 1st Conference on Lifelong Learning and Distant Learning, 227-231, Rethymno, 23-24 October 2004.

Stokking, K.-M. (1996), Dissemination and Utilization of Knowledge and Innovations, In T. Plomp D.-P. Ely (Eds.), The International Encyclopedia of Educational Technology, Second Edition, 269-273, Pergamon, Oxford.

Tidd, J., Bessant, J. R. & Pavitt, K. (1997), Managing innovation: integrating technological, market, and organizational change, Wiley, New York.

Tornatzky, L.-G. & Fleischer, M. (1990), The Processes of Technological Innovation, Lexington Books, Massachusetts.

Turkle, S. (1997), Life on the screen, identity in the age of the Internet, Touchostone, New York. Vargas-Vera M., Moreale, E., Stutt, A., Motta, E. & Ciravegna, F. (2006), MnM: Semi Automatic

Ontology Population from Text, in Kishore, R., Ramesh, R. & Sharman, R., (eds), Ontologies in the Context of Information Systems, Springer-Verlag, UK.

Ziman, J. (2000), Technological Innovation as an Evolutionary Process, Cambridge University Press, UK.

dissemination of innovation in an institution of tertiary education k. vassilakis,...

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