Diffusion of Instructional Television in Higher Education: a Study of the Annenberg/Cpb Project (Innovation).

Abstract

This study examines the dynamics of higher education innovation as reflected in the introduction and utilization of five instructional television courses produced by the Annenberg/CPB Project. Following thirty-four interviews with telecourse users and experts, two surveys were conducted among samples drawn from 4600 higher education faculty and administrators who had received print or video preview materials describing the Annenberg/CPB telecourses. Separate questionnaires for faculty and for administrators probed the subjects' decision to adopt or not adopt the telecourses. Four categories of influence were examined: content and production aspects of the telecourses; manner in which the telecourses had been marketed; characteristics of adopting/non-adopting faculty and administrators; and characteristics of the colleges and universities in which adopters/non-adopters were located. These categories correspond to four foci in innovation research: product design, diffusion, adopter characteristics, and institutional context. Analysis of variance techniques, including discriminant analysis, were employed to assess the strongest predictors of adoption across categories as well as within each of the four categories. Subjects' reaction to the content quality of the telecourses, and the importance which they placed on such quality, emerged as the best predictor of adoption among the design elements. Content quality combined with technical quality and curricular adaptability to form "academic usability," the study's best predictor of adoption. Cost emerged as the most important concern among the diffusion issues, followed by influence of the person who introduced the adopter to the telecourses, and by adequacy of lead-time in receiving preview materials. Predisposition toward instructional television was the only personal or professional individual characteristic which predicted adoption of these telecourses. Adoption of the innovation related to institution context primarily in those cases where the adopter anticipated institutional approval and practical support for a decision to adopt, but also in cases where administrators were known to be supportive of innovation generally, and where there was a history of successful innovation within the institution.