Roger's categories

How far can you apply Roger's model to a context you know – a current or past place of work, or a less formal situation? For example, can you link it to an innovation in elearning?

The course L195 ( OU Beginners Italian),which was launched a year ago, introduced in one go: Lyceum, forums, blogs and wikis, e-TMAs, podcasts, interactive exercises and Audacity for speaking tasks. No foreign languages had ever been taught completely online before and the whole structure of the course was designed to create a completely new learning experience.

So how can the stakeholders be classified using Roger's categories?

Course designers/ course team - they were innovators/early adopters - They had some knowledge of the educational value of the new tools and associated learning experience, but had not thought/ had no funding to support the tutors with training (this meant that many tutors were not able to support the students) Also the number of tools that was introduced suggested a wish to use the technology because it was available and it was said to have educational value, but the way tasks had been designed was not always conducive to learning. They took a huge risk and had to endure much heated criticism.

The tutors - some were early adopted (like me) mostly because they knew what to do with the new tools, believed that a combination of these (not all at once) could work and tried to help colleagues and students. Some were an early majority and tried their best to understand and cope: they offered constrctive feedback, welcomed dialogue and asked for training. Not all of these are convinced yet about the suitability of the innovations introduced. Some were clearly a late minority: some of these criticised everything and left.

The students - judging from my 20 students and those who wrote on the general forums the large majority behaved as late majority, 10% were early adopters and a good number ( I can't quantify)were laggards. The laggards refused to use the online tools; some were disillusioned and stressed and dropped out .
The students' attitudes can be justified by the fact that most are retired, some are elderly, the majority wants to learn Italian because they associate this language with the things of the past: the Renaissance, the historic centre of Italian towns, the opera and traditional regional food. For them, innovation and technology have nothing to do with all this nor with the way have they been studying in the past. Some were suspicious about the use of broadband, others demanded cassettes and CDs and more face-to- face tutorials. Many refused all these innovations, boycotted them and just used the books which were not sufficient to pass the course.

My conclusion Our reaction to innovation depends on our background, age, past experiences and expectations. It is possible to change as a result of experience, training and, most of all, the possibility (always present at the OU) and a willingness to discuss things in a constructive way.