Why and how faculty adopt learning analytics: Wide-scale adoption through a diffusion of innovation lens

While there is a broad consensus around the potential for learning analytics (LA) to positively affect education, widespread adoption of LA in higher education is lacking. LA research has produced frameworks supporting policy development; however, many of these top-down approaches focus on managing resistance to change (Macfadyen, Dawson, Pardo & Gaševic, 2014). In this chapter, we view adoption as occurring at the level of individual faculty and staff who may use LA day-to-day, and diffusion as the higher-level group phenomenon that focuses on the ways in which an innovation spreads (Rogers, 2003). We examine bottom-up and widespread diffusion of an LA platform, the Student Relationship Engagement System (SRES), through an Australian university. Using two elements of Rogers’ model of diffusion of innovations, innovation and communication channels, we explore diffusion of SRES through the lens of teachers’ experiences. Our findings highlight the strength of a bottom-up approach based on LA fulfilling unmet teachers’ needs, leading to organic growth of champions that co-create value in use of LA.