A “Use Diffusion” Perspective on Teachers’ Adoption and Use of a Social Teaching Platform

• In Event: Professional Practice, Teachers, and Teacher Preparation

Abstract

This paper examines how and why teachers in five school districts used an online tool, the Curriculum Customization Service (CCS) in their instructional practices. The CCS enables teachers to utilize educational resources from multiple providers, customize content into classroom activities, and share resources with other teachers. Using the lens of the use diffusion framework, we analyzed automatically collected usage data (i.e., “big data”) generated by the teachers to understand how teachers used the CCS and how partitioning use helped reveal nuances in teachers’ usage patterns. We then “ground truth” observed behaviors from this partitioning by analyzing teacher interviews and classroom observations to examine why teachers engaged in these activities as they used the CCS.

Authors

• Heather Leary, University of Colorado - Boulder

• Victor R. Lee, Utah State University

• Mimi M. Recker, Utah State University