A note to those who cares about Instructional Technology and improving real, live classrooms: I would love your feedback. 🙂
In their article Creating a Framework for Research On Systemic Technology Innovations, Fishman et al. describe a “usability cube” and state that its purpose is to “predict the difficulty any particular innovation faces in the adoption process (p. 52). ” This is an ambitious claim that caught my attention.
The three axes represented by the cube are capability, culture, and policy and management. Fishman et al. state, “The distance between the innovation and the origin represents the gap that exists between the capacity required to successfully use the innovation and the current capacity of the district (p. 51).” The authors claim that improving usability is a case of closing the gap. Kudos to Fishman et al. for stating the obvious — and for doing it in 3D! This may be a nice visual for some, but I question its usefulness. What have the authors told me with a cube graphic that they couldn’t have told me with three bullet points? Of course technology innovations need to address capability, culture, and policy of the target school and school district. That is basic market research. Who would design and implement a product without carefully considering the target user and the systems that affect that user’s environment? The real question we should be asking is how do we do this?
I can only conclude that this article is aimed at academic researchers who are so caught up in their own grant-funded worlds that they have lost sight of the needs that they set out to address. And yet the challenges of obtaining buy-in from faculty, administrators, and even students are not always obvious. It might be valuable to invite a marketing specialist to write about successful strategies that have been used to introduce an innovation into a school district. It would be equally useful to hear from administrators and teachers who have worked with researchers, and who could point out best practices and identify potential pitfalls. The more I think of Fishman’s usability cube, the more I can visualize the cylinders that represent institutional and departmental silos that prevent real usability and actual transfer from academic research to classroom implementation.
Yikes! You go Tom!
Well, I would say that the cube represents that the three elements exist as a continuum–related multi-dimensionally, which is far less well-represented as bullets. Also, your notion of a “target” is far less complicated that what the authors are describing as “capacity for successful use.” I would not think that marketing analysis completely covers key elements of integration, successfully or otherwise, only perhaps “need.” But then again, I’m not in marketing, I’m stuck in one of those cylinders. 🙂
That’s a fair statement, and certainly the notion that “it’s all just marketing” is an oversimplification of what is usually a complex process. I should add that the examples provided in the article were very useful. Researchers who want to see their work implemented in schools don’t need another model involving cubes and gaps. They need to understand the perspectives of the other stakeholders. In this type of article students, teachers, and administrators need more of a voice.
When it comes to ‘just marketing,’ Porter’s 5 Forces is king in describing any given industry or product. It’s possibly even more complex than Fishman’s model, since 5 > 3, right?. 🙂
Porter’s 5 Forces are: bargaining power of suppliers, bargaining power of buyers, threat of new entrants, threat of substitute products, and intensity of rivalry in the industry. I consider the last force to not really be a force, but the result from the other four forces. That is, if the first four are not ideal, either everyone is going to jump in on your action or there will just plain be no market at all. Some might disagree with me.
You can google it to find out more about the 5 forces, but basically, it is designed to address all the various stakeholders involved. The focus in marketing is more on whether you can make money off a product, but if you consider likelihood of implementation to be equivalent to people buying your stuff (which it may very well be) the model may stretch just right to fit.