Publishing New Media in Higher Education: Overcoming the Adoption Hurdle

Abstract

The adoption process is the major means by which publishers get new learning materials into the hands of students in the higher education marketplace. In order for a new learning tool, be it print, multimedia, or other, to be adopted, an instructor must be aware of it, willing to use it, and able to use it. These three tenets can be harder to achieve with new media projects than with print. It is easy to forget that faculty need to be educated along with students, and that faculty development is as important as the curricular content development. It is a function of educational publishers to help university authors not only improve the quality of their materials, but also make sure they reach the widest possible audience through the adoption cycle. This paper will focus on techniques for bringing university-developed new media materials to market. Several methods have been proven effective for disseminating new media products into the marketplace: faculty as well as student testing, workshops, review, and other forms of faculty education are critical to acceptance of new media learning tools. These processes will be outlined along with some successful examples. Reviewers: Terry Anderson (U. Alberta), Roy Rada (Washington State U.), Andy Reilly (Open U.), Eileen Scanlon (Open U.)