Diffusion Strategies

The goal of any diffusion strategy is to spread the word about your innovation and encourage users to adopt it. In the case of the Orange Grove, the targeted users are faculty, both tenured and adjunct. During the planning phases of this document, we presented a number of approaches to inform faculty about the repository. These strategies may also be modified and used to target any other user groups your repository may wish to solicit. This PowerPoint presentation might offer you some insight into adoption issues facing repositories.

As your implementation plans are finalized, you may want to refine your diffusion strategy. When attempting to spread adoption of a new technology, there is not one correct approach. Your approach should be based on the culture of the organization/s. It is likely that you will have to approach the challenges in multiple ways to achieve your goal. In this section we will discuss some examples of strategies used by various repositories to locate and educate potential repository users while encouraging adoption. These include:

• The Orange Grove Scholar/Advisor Program
• Fostering communication and collaboration among users
• Promoting your repository for publication and scholarship
• Offering opportunities for community service

1. The Orange Grove Scholar/Advisor Program The Orange Grove is currently exploring the effects of both a top-down and a bottom-up approach. We hope that having information about The Orange Grove emanating from multiple sources and points of view will lead to greater and more rapid diffusion of the innovation. Members of The Orange Grove staff and committees and Florida Distance Learning Consortium continue to seek support from statewide leaders, legislators, and other influential groups and individuals who may affect use of The Orange Grove. More recently, we have contracted with a group of faculty members to work as “Orange Grove Scholar/Advisors.”

The Orange Grove Scholars are nominated by FDLC members or The Orange Grove institutional liaison for their leadership capabilities and their interest in digital content. These faculty members operate on their individual university and college campuses around the state and reach out to individual faculty members and departments. A list of potential tasks [PDF] is provided to the nominees. The tasks are reviewed and all or some tasks are agreed upon by the faculty members and The Orange Grove staff to form the basis of the contractual agreement with the faculty and payment for their services. These faculty members serve at least a two semester commitment.

The Orange Grove Scholar/Advisor program is supported by FIPSE funds, and provides an opportunity to explore techniques for increasing repository uptake. Scholar/Advisors serve as the information conduit to department chairs, deans, vice-presidents, presidents. They demonstrate, teach, and request contributions of content from their fellow faculty members. The Orange Grove Scholar has added credibility and interest at the campus level, which is critical for adoption of the repository resources for use in their teaching. The OG Scholars have indicated that it is extremely beneficial to have two individuals working together to share ideas and put on events. This appears to be particularly important in the early stages of adoption of the repository.

The Scholar/Advisor program began in the fall of 2008 with a single institution. We identified two faculty members at Florida Gulf Coast University and offered them a small stipend in exchange for acting as “champions” on their campus and promoting usage of The Orange Grove. After the first semester, we expanded the program to include seven more advisors at four additional institutions (two advisors each at Seminole Community College, St. Petersburg Community College, and Manatee Community College, and one advisor at the University of West Florida). This expanded effort is currently ongoing, and evaluation results for this initiative will be included in future versions of the Blueprint.

This two phase approach was helpful, as the advisors from Florida Gulf Coast University were able to offer insights and suggestions to the new advisors. As part of their strategy, the Florida Gulf Coast University advisors created a blog to record their experiences (http://orangegroveblog.wordpress.com/). The blog was then expanded to facilitate communication among the expanded group of Scholar/Advisors. This tool serves several functions. It provides an easy way for Orange Grove staff members to disseminate information to the Scholar/Advisors. We have posted items such as orientation materials, PowerPoint presentations, graphics and logos, and other resources. The Scholar/Advisors are able to access and download this information as needed. In addition, the blog allows the Scholar/Advisors to communicate with one another and share ideas, successes, and challenges. The blog was especially useful to the new advisors when they were starting, as it gave them the opportunity to review and learn from the experiences posted by the Florida Gulf Coast University advisors.

2. Foster communication and collaboration among users. Providing your users a sense of community and a chance to engage with their colleagues can help encourage them to use the repository. One method is to establish User communities around areas of common interest. In his article “From repositories supported by communities to communities supported by repositories: Issues and lessons learned,” Tom Carey describes several innovative approaches used by MERLOT to facilitate repository use. (http://www.ascilite.org.au/conferences/singapore07/procs/carey.pdf [PDF]) One is to develop “communities of purpose” – groups within the repository that focus on a particular interest or passion. This organizational structure allows faculty from different institutions to interact and collaborate with others whose interests align with their own. In addition, MERLOT resources can be accessed via community portals, which offer a single point of entry to a variety of resources that pertain to a particular discipline. The communities of purpose also function as editorial boards for the discipline portals, assisting with organization and management of resources.

Another strategy employed by MERLOT is the Elixr program (http://elixr.merlot.org/about/.) The goal of this initiative is to “develop and test new collaborations amongst faculty development centers and online resource repositories.” The goal of this initiative is to create, “innovative models for the development, sharing and use of discipline-oriented resources which illustrate exemplary teaching practices and which also support faculty with exemplary learning objects to help implement those practices with their students.” By organizing faculty into discipline-oriented groups, the members are able to observe a particular resource in use within the context of their own discipline.

3. Promote your repository for publication and scholarship. As part of their promotion and tenure requirements university faculty must provide evidence of scholarly publications. Generally, this is accomplished through books or articles submitted to peer-reviewed journals.

Increasingly, some faculty are choosing to publish outside the traditional model. Clifford Lynch, in a 2003 article (http://www.arl.org/resources/pubs/br/br226/br226ir.shtml ) speaks about new, freely accessible disciplinary collections that are changing the way scholarly information is accessed and disseminated. The repository can also guarantee preservation of these works. Lynch foresees that both faculty and student work might be housed in repositories, as well as documentation of performance events and other intellectual activities that can provide a record of the “ongoing intellectual life of the institution.” While some universities, such as the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, have pioneered efforts to develop this approach to publishing, other universities have been slower to adopt this model. The Orange Grove project director has consistently promoted the potential value of recognizing both digital publishing and creation of digital learning materials as scholarly efforts at individual institutions. Other possible article: http://www.ams.org/notices/199804/branin.pdf

4. Offer opportunities for community service. A repository can also provide an opportunity for community service which is another area to document tenure and/or promotion review You might explore areas in which the repository could assist in accruing these hours. For example, faculty who review materials and vet resources in their subject area could document those efforts toward their service requirement.

The Orange Grove Digital Repository identified approximately 35 faculty members statewide to metatag licensed resources from the National Repository of Online Courses (NROC). We believed that additional metadata, including the addition of Statewide Course Numbers, would help facilitate discovery of these resources. Faculty members in identified subject areas such as mathematics, chemistry, biology, history, etc. were nominated and signed up to be “reviewers”. These faculty members were asked to enter specific metadata fields such as the relevant course numbers (based on Florida’s Statewide Course Numbering System) which these resources might support, additional keywords, grade/age levels, and estimated learner completion time, as well as add any additional descriptive information they thought might prove useful to repository users. As a recognition of the faculty member’s service, The Orange Grove staff provided each reviewer with a $20 gift certificate to Border’s Bookstore and a letter of recognition/appreciation for their service. In the future, we plan to collect names and addresses for each reviewer’s academic dean or vice president, in order to send a copy of the letter to them. (link to letter)Another opportunity for service would be to serve as a subject matter experts (SMEs) for the repository on an ongoing basis. Many repositories have editorial boards SMEs that review the content in the repository for accuracy, quality of design, and pedagogy. For example, the Intute repository in the United Kingdom offers a database of web resources vetted by SMEs in each particular subject area. The Intute administration is a consortium of seven universities and partners from across the U.K., (http://www.intute.ac.uk/about.html). The group’s list of partners (http://www.intute.ac.uk/partners.html) is extensive and ensures Intute has the ability to find an expert to review content in any subject. As resources are suggested for the repository, a SME in the relevant area is assigned to review the material and make certain that it is up to established repository standards. (more on Intute: http://www.innovateonline.info/index.html?view=article&id=398&action=article)

When considering any of the above options, it is important to remember that generally each institution decides what types of publication and service counts toward promotion and tenure. This can make it challenging to have policies related to your repository adopted. You will want to work with your contacts at the various institutions, particularly those in key leadership positions, to move any such initiatives forward.

Resources
Change Management PowerPoint