It is indeed safe to assume that one will encounter people in the workplace who have low self-efficacy in experimenting with new technologies. In my own workplace, when our school transitioned over to a new technology-based method of teaching, there was much resistance, namely by those who had no secure comfort zone when it came to utilizing technology on a daily basis. The attitudes these people exhibited were those of initial insecurity, which instantly became attitudes of rejection, criticism of the new model, and doubt of the entire program. Their behaviors were very elusive; people who did not feel secure with the new program were very negative and even began to refuse to utilize the new program and relied heavily upon the traditional models of teaching instead of the new technology-infused models.
Using Keller’s ARCS model, I could change the motivation of these people to encourage to success. I could gain their attention and demonstrate the relevance of the new model by actually demonstrating the model in a live, real classroom from our school. In this fashion, the teachers who were not comfortable can be persuaded in a more positive way by visually and hands-on observing how it would work and perhaps see the utility in the process. Confidence could be endowed upon the teachers by providing a “training wheel” of sorts. By this, I mean that in-class assistance could be utilized to show the teacher how to specifically implement the model in their classroom, first by a trainer doing the process, then gradually weaning the teacher into the process with a training wheel, then finally, once the teacher is confident, allowing them to successfully move forward and explore and learn on their own. Of course, there would be mistakes to be made in the future, but the ideas of the new model would no longer be rejected and it is through the mistakes that the ultimate learning would take place.
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Charity,
ReplyDeleteWouldn't you think that educators would embrace the opportunity (challenge) to learn learn something new, especially if it will benefit the future of their students? It must be a universal tendancy for lack of security to cause fear, negative feelings and ultimately failure of incorporating new technologies. While I have been guilty of leaving workshops questioning the relevance to my program,I usually gave it a try. Often times, teachers are provided with a brief training period and are expected to learn on the job. This year four of our classrooms had interactive boards installed without ever training the faculty recieving them. The training componenet came later.If Keller's ARCS theory were properly implemented, new terchnologies would be better utilized by more faculty members.