Beyond the “How-To”: A Dual-Framework Model to Drive Strategic LMS Adoption and Empower Student Success
General description of the project
This project presents a best practice model for diagnosing and improving Learning Management System (LMS) adoption, a critical factor for supporting diverse and commuting students. Conducted at Hostos Community College, it uses a dual framework: Rogers’s Diffusion of Innovation Theory to understand the how of adoption, and Chickering’s Seven Principles of Good Practice to understand the pedagogical why.
Evidence of Success & Cost-Effectiveness: A faculty survey (n=17) provided quantifiable evidence. While innovation attributes like relative advantage (e.g., streamlined grading) are important, the strongest motivator is the LMS’s ability to enact Chickering’s principles, such as facilitating student-faculty contact (82.4% agreement) and prompt feedback (94.1% agreement). This model is highly cost-effective, leveraging existing resources (the LMS, survey tools) to refocus professional development toward high-impact, faculty-motivated training.
This framework provides a diagnostic tool for administrators. Instead of guessing why adoption lags, they can make data-informed decisions to target specific barriers (e.g., complexity) and leverage key motivators (e.g., pedagogical alignment), making strategic planning more effective.
The primary lesson is that promoting technology based on features alone is insufficient. The most powerful driver for faculty is pedagogical utility. Successful integration requires: 1) Reducing innovation barriers, and 2) Demonstrating how the LMS is a lever for achieving recognized principles of good teaching.
Technologies
The core technology is the Blackboard Learn LMS. This project demonstrates not just how to use its tools (Announcements, Grade Center, Tests), but how to effectively build a culture of adoption around them. We used Qualtrics for data collection and descriptive analysis to map faculty perceptions and tool usage onto our theoretical framework. This process transformed the LMS from a passive platform into a subject of strategic inquiry, enabling a targeted implementation strategy that aligns technological capability with pedagogical intent. The effective use of Qualtrics for diagnostics was key to achieving the performance goal of understanding and improving adoption rates.
Explain project results
This project directly benefits students by creating a more consistent and supportive digital learning environment. When faculty fully adopt the LMS, students gain reliable access to materials, clear communication channels, and timely feedback-key factors for persistence and success in gateway courses like mathematics.
The institution gains a data-driven, replicable methodology to improve its ROI in the LMS. It has directly informed the design of more targeted and effective faculty development programs, leading to improved instructional quality and a more robust infrastructure for supporting student success equitably.
Why it should be considered best practice?
This is a replicable best practice because it provides a validated, theoretical model for any institution to:
1. Diagnose: Systematically identify the specific drivers and barriers to LMS adoption.
2. Develop: Create targeted, cost-effective interventions (e.g., workshops on pedagogically complex tools).
3. Empower: Move faculty from reluctant users to motivated adopters by connecting technology to their core values of good teaching and students’ success.
This framework is a scalable solution for moving from passive technology provision to active, strategic integration that truly serves student success goals.
Highlights of your proposed presentation
Attendees of this session will gain an innovative, ready-to-apply framework that combines Rogers’s and Chickering’s models to strategically enhance technology adoption. They will receive actionable data on which LMS tools faculty prioritize and, more importantly, the pedagogical reasons why. This leads to clear, strategic takeaways for designing professional development that moves beyond “how-to” training to deeply integrate the LMS, thereby creating a more equitable and supportive learning environment. The key lesson is that for technology adoption to be meaningful and sustainable, training must be intrinsically linked to pedagogical outcomes that faculty value.
The Evaluation Committee will evaluate submitted proposals based on the following criteria. Each area will be rated on a scale from 1 to 5 (1= non-satisfactory; 5 =outstanding), for a maximum of 45 points.