Critical Issues Faced by Faculty when an Institution Adopts a New Learning Management System (LMS)

Document Type

Dissertation

Degree Name

Doctor of Education (Ed.D)

Department

Higher Edu and Learning Technology

Date of Award

Fall 2021

Abstract

The focus of this study was to explore faculty’s perceptions, backgrounds, and overall experiences, including online instruction and experience dealing with LMS change and transition. There has been a plethora written about opposition to adopting a new innovation but not much on transitioning from one LMS to another regarding faculty in higher education. Research has exposed that faculty often have little to no confidence when it comes to operating new technology and therefore, they would rather avoid and resist it altogether. This researcher used the Stages of Concern Questionnaire (SoCQ), based on the Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM), as the tool to pull together data. The CBAM was proven to be a helpful tool for discovering the challenges and concerns of faculty undergoing a transition change. Comprised of three major components—concern stage, usage level, and transition configuration (Yeldell, 2017). The premise behind this model is for a transition to be successful, one must understand the challenges and concerns of those responsible for its use. There are numerous change models available and worthy of mentioning, the CBAM (Hall & Hord, 2001) fits this research most adequately. Using this model, the researcher explored faculty who have gone through the adoption process of LMS, getting a glimpse of an individual’s processes related to considerations, perceptions, attitudes, and thoughts when an institution adopts an unfamiliar innovation (Adams, 2002; Ansah & Johnson, 2003). The SoCQ has been used in previous studies to understand the process of change regarding the implementation of adopting a new LMS. It is important to understand how educational initiatives are used by faculty. Since instructors are the main facilitators of online courses, it only seems feasible to examine factors related to their concerns during the implementation process of a new LMS in a small, regional university in Texas as calculated by the SoCQ

Advisor

Dimitra Smith

Subject Categories

Education | Higher Education

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