PenberthyMillarDisseminationArticle

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Innovative Higher Education PH112-370188 June 10, 2002 10:47 Style file version June 4th, 2002
Innovative Higher Education, Vol. 26, No. 4, Summer 2002 ( C 2002)
The “Hand-off” as a Flawed Approach
to Disseminating Innovation: Lessons
from Chemistry
Debra L. Penberthy and Susan B. Millar
ABSTRACT: Drawing on studies of active learning methods in an undergraduate chem-
istry course at a research institution, we first present two case studies exploring the
change processes and outcomes of the faculty member who designed the course and
the one who adapted it. We then explore the nature of the problems experienced dur-
ing the adaptation process. We conclude with recommendations for successfully diffusing
innovations: adapting faculty members should choose innovations that genuinely interest
them and are aligned with their goals, should experiment with innovations in a gradual
way, and should receive support throughout the process.
KEY WORDS: dissemination; chemistry reform; faculty development.
In recent years many professors and faculty developers have been in-
volved in promoting the use of active and cooperative learning methods.
They are motivated by both personal experience with the innovations
and a growing body of literature indicating that small group (Brown,
Collins, & Duguid, 1989; Bruer, 1954; Chickering & Gamson, 1987; Fox,
1998; Lave & Wenger, 1991; Rogoff, 1990; Springer, 1998; Springer,
Stanne, & Donnovan, 1997) and other active learning strategies are
effective at fostering knowledge acquisition and use (Bruffee, 1992;
Kurfiss & Boice, 1990; Vygotsky, 1978; Weimer, 1990; Wertsch, 1991).
Simultaneously, faculty development programs are gaining acceptance
in colleges and universities across the country (Gaff & Simpson, 1994).
Debra L. Penberthy, B.A., Florida State University (1990), is an educational evalua-
tor at the Office of Educational Assessment at the University of Washington. Prior
to this she served as an evaluator at the University of Wisconsin’s Learning through
Evaluation, Adaptation and Dissemination (LEAD) Center. Her research interests in-
clude faculty development, K-16 systemic reform, and alternative models for evalu-
ation. She is currently a graduate student at the University of Washington. Susan
Millar, Ph.D. Cornell University (1981), a cultural anthropologist, currently directs the
UW-Madison (LEAD) Center (http://www.engr.wisc.edu/∼lead). She has expertise in eval-
uation of education reform and change processes in higher education, with a focus on the
physical sciences. She also is the “lead fellow” for the Institute on Learning Technol-
ogy, a project of the National Institute for Science Education College Level One team.
(http://www.wcer.wisc.edu/nise/cl1).
251 C 2002 Human Sciences Press, Inc.

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252 INNOVATIVE HIGHER EDUCATION
Regardless of the type of reform, faculty and faculty developers are
increasingly interested in effective ways to promote the adaptation of
innovations and to support colleagues who are interested in trying new
methods. This article seeks to improve existing processes of faculty de-
velopment by presenting the experiences of (1) a full professor of chem-
istry at a major research university who had strong personal evidence
and evaluation data that active learning methods helped him achieve
his student learning goals in an analytical chemistry course for ad-
vanced ﬁrst-year students, and (2) his departmental colleague (another
full professor) whom he enlisted to use these active learning methods
to teach the same course.
We begin with an exploration of the change processes and outcomes
for the faculty member who designed the course (referred to by the
pseudonym “Ted”) and the one who adapted the course (“Peter”). We
then explore the nature of the problems Peter experienced during the
adaptation process. We conclude with lessons intended for faculty
“change agents,” that is, faculty who are interested in promoting change
in educational practice among their colleagues and for professional
faculty developers.
In short, this article argues that successful dissemination is unlikely
if a faculty change agent or professional developer tries to modify a
colleague’s practice by promoting his or her own approach and sim-
ply telling a potential adapter how to implement the changes, leaving
the colleague to reproduce the strategies on his or her own. To pro-
mote the use of innovative teaching strategies among more faculty, it
is essential to foster a situation in which adapting faculty members
choose to adapt innovations based on their own interest and excite-
ment, select innovations to address student learning problems that
immediately concern them, experiment with innovations in a gradual
way, and receive support throughout the process. Implementation of
these four guidelines should enable adapting professors to proceed in
the methodical, experimental fashion needed to acquire the necessary
skill with, and faith in, new pedagogical methods, their students, and
themselves.
The Study
In 1995, the National Science Foundation’s Division of Undergradu-
ate Education funded a project entitled “New Traditions: Revitalizing

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Lessons on Disseminating Innovation 253
the Curriculum” initiative.1
New Traditions (NT) is a coalition of chem-
istry faculty from various research and undergraduate institutions in
the Midwest who are engaging in and studying curricular innovation
based on the premise that students learn chemistry in more meaningful
and effective ways when instructors use active learning techniques and
the curriculum is context-rich (New Traditions Project Leaders, 1998).
The primary goals of the NT group are, first, to determine whether or
not their methods result in more effective learning and, second, to fos-
ter adaptation of proven reforms among faculty around the country. In
service of the first goal, the authors, third-party evaluators contracted
by the NT group, evaluated the reforms using qualitative and quantita-
tive methods. As a first step in achieving the second goal, the NT group
has undertaken experiments involving the adoption and adaptation of
NT reforms by other members of the coalition. One such experiment is
the focus of this article.
The information presented here is based on a two-phase research
study. In the first phase, we conducted an in-depth investigation of
Ted’s course, which incorporated small-group and other active learn-
ing strategies. In addition to documenting Ted’s process of designing
the course and his goals and strategies, we investigated the students’
learning processes and outcomes and the experiences of the gradu-
ate teaching assistants for the course. We found that the course was
highly effective at fostering Ted’s learning goals (Millar, S.B., Pasch,
J., Penberthy, D.L., & Kosciuk, S.A., 1995; Wright, J.C., Millar, S.B.,
Kosciuk, S.A., Penberthy, D.L., Williams, P.H., & Wambold, B.E., 1998).
During this first phase study we also learned that the NT faculty at
Ted’s institution, despite efforts to engage other science faculty col-
leagues on campus in their efforts to reform the teaching of lower
division courses, largely worked in isolation. This lack of collegial in-
teraction about teaching is typical at major research institutions.
Perhaps somewhat less typical is the paucity of campus resources de-
voted to faculty development. While teaching improvement resources
had been available for several years from the information technology
division, the only formal faculty development resource offered to all
instructors on campus had just been made available. However, partici-
pation was limited to faculty who made a commitment to participate in
1“New Traditions” was headquartered at the University of Wisconsin-Madison and
funded from 1995–2000 to develop, evaluate, and then disseminate ways to improve
student learning in introductory chemistry courses. Dissemination activity is continu-
ing from 2000–2003 under an additional NSF grant.

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a two-hour meeting each week. In addition, essentially no formal fac-
ulty development resources were provided by the college in which the
chemistry department is located. It was not a surprise, therefore, that
it did not occur to the NT faculty to seek support for their education
reform efforts from faculty developers on campus.
Some non-“NT” members of Ted’s department, although interested
in the conclusions of our evaluation, questioned whether the student
outcomes were more due to Ted’s personality and his innate teaching
abilities than to his inventive teaching methods. These faculty mem-
bers thought it unlikely that others could have the same success as Ted,
simply through changing their teaching approaches. Ted was confident
that this was not the case and wanted to demonstrate that another
faculty member could indeed do what he had done. Ted and other mem-
bers of the NT coalition hoped to show that others could obtain the same
changes in student learning and skills and to document the process by
which other faculty learned to use the new strategies. To this end, Ted
decided to “hand-off” the course to another faculty member who might
be willing to teach it repeatedly. He acted on his decision by enlisting
Peter to implement the course in the spring of 1996. Peter’s agreement
to take over the course enabled the second phase of the authors’ re-
search, a study of the course adapter’s experience in implementing Ted’s
course. This phase is called the faculty change processes study to dis-
tinguish it from the original course evaluation. We had three primary
research questions:
• To what degree did the “hand-off” of this course work?
• What factors affected the success or failure of the hand-off?
• How, if at all, did Ted’s change process differ from Peter’s? Based
upon the answers to the above, what lessons can be offered to in-
form other efforts involving the promotion or adaption of innova-
tive pedagogical techniques by higher education faculty?
For the faculty change processes study our primary data collection
method was structured, open-ended interviews with the instructors.
(Some of these interviews were originally conducted as part of the eval-
uation of Ted’s course.) The instructors included the course designer
(Ted) and the course adapter (Peter), Peter’s graduate student teaching
assistants (TAs), and Ted’s TAs.
Ted was interviewed by one of the authors twice in 1995, as part of
the original study of his course. The other author interviewed Peter
five times over the period just prior to the start of the 1996 spring
semester through the final examination week. These interviews were

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conducted at two- to three-week intervals in order to obtain “real-time”
reactions and reﬂections from the professor about his experience. All
six of Peter’s TAs were interviewed prior to the middle of the semester,
and three were interviewed again at the end of the semester. All six of
Ted’s TAs were interviewed in the middle and at the end of the semester
in which they taught the course. In addition, Ted and Peter were inter-
viewed together immediately after the semester ended. Peter also was
interviewed once in the spring of 1998, 21 months after he taught the
course, and again in spring 2000 to ascertain the longer term effects
of his spring 1996 course adaptation experience. In addition to inter-
views, we conducted observations of both instructors’ labs and lectures
and surveyed Peter’s students to provide a context for interview analy-
sis. (For the original study of Ted’s course we conducted many in-depth
interviews and multiple surveys with students.) Finally, both professors
carefully reviewed, commented on, and agreed with the researchers on
the interpretation of the data presented here.
The Case of the Course Designer (Ted)
Motivations for Change, Course Goals, and Strategies
Since 1973, Ted had been teaching a large lecture (100 students),
introductory analytical chemistry course intended for advanced, ﬁrst-
year science, math, and engineering majors. The pre-requisite for the
course was an accelerated one-semester course in general chemistry.
The course involved the use of teaching assistants who led discussion
sections (one hour per week) and laboratories (two four-hour sessions
each week) with groups of approximately 20 students. Teaching assis-
tants for this and all other large introductory chemistry courses are
generally early graduate students who have yet to receive a research
appointment. They are not required to have a demonstrated interest in
teaching; and, at the time of this study, the TA training consisted of one
week with very little time spent on pedagogical issues.
Over the years, Ted had noticed that even the students who performed
at the top of the class on exams were unable to apply the material. He
began to wonder how well the other students comprehended it. Wishing
to improve these outcomes, he began to talk with his students, primar-
ily in the laboratory, to get their input on why they were understanding
less than he had hoped and how he might address this problem. Concur-
rently, he was discussing small group learning with a senior colleague

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who had moved to a liberal arts college and was experienced with that
approach. Of note, he did not work with other faculty or with faculty
developers on campus during this period of course development. We be-
lieve this was both a function of being in an individualistic academic
environment and also of teaching a specialized course that serves a
fairly small number of introductory students.
Ted believed that it was possible to improve students’ critical think-
ing and comprehension. Starting in 1991, he approached his search
for the necessary teaching and learning strategies with the scientific
method in mind, stating in an interview with one of the authors that
educational reform is “an experimental science just like any other re-
search . . . You try lots of different things . . . and it’s important to find
out both whether they’re working or not and what you need to do . . . to
make it work better.” He began to understand that his primary goal was
to use the course as “a vehicle to train students how to do science and
think like scientists.” For him, acquisition of content knowledge and
development of lab skills were secondary goals. His main concern was
that the students truly engage in the discovery process he designed for
them, for he believed that they would develop the requisite knowledge
and skills if they did.
Thus it was that, over a period of several years, and working pri-
marily on his own, Ted tried one or more innovations each semester.
For example, one year he introduced the use of cooperative exams, an-
other year he required students to read and analyze research papers
in small groups, and then the next year asked students to work in
small groups to tackle difficult open-ended lab problems. Although he
found that each innovation addressed the student learning problem to
some extent, he was still unsatisfied with the outcomes. He decided that
the best approach would be to use several innovations simultaneously
and strategically to foster synergism among the innovations. He taught
this integrated version of the course, which we call structured-active-
learning (SAL), for the first time in 1991. From 1991–1995 he made sub-
tle changes to the SAL course, based on what he learned each semester
about what worked best. By 1995, the essential course elements were:
• TAs teaching lab and discussion sections using a “guide-on-the-
side” approach,
• small group, open-ended laboratory projects with the grading
based on written reports and oral exams,
• small groups of students reading and analyzing research papers,
• interactive techniques incorporated into a more traditional lecture,

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• an absolute grading scale to encourage cooperation,
• cooperative exams as well as traditional exams,
• spreadsheet programs for homework and laboratory problems,
• a volunteer student board of directors that advised the professor
on the course,
• and integration of all course activities and assessments.
Ted strongly emphasized the role of the course reward structure—
that is, the types of assignments and tests, and the basis upon which
they were graded—in fostering the course goal of promoting an ability to
“think like a scientist.” He stated,
The essential thing that I’m after is giving students opportunities to cre-
atively explore projects that have defined goals, and in the process they
improve their skills. It’s then really neat to talk to them [in the oral ex-
ams] . . . If you have given them something for a project that does not
have an answer . . . [or] a “right way,” . . . and they’re convinced that there
isn’t a right way, then there is opportunity for them to be creative. And if
they can get into that project so that they enjoy what they’re doing, they
consider it significant and worth their time, [and] they get ownership of
what’s going on, then the emphasis for them is not on the grade that
they’re going to get, but on the pride that they take in doing it, as well as
the experience of working together.
He emphasized that his reward structure was designed to promote cre-
ativity and discourage memorization, and interview statements made
it clear that his reward structure values process over specific learning
outcomes. In fact, Ted often discussed the fact that the oral exams on the
open-ended lab projects were as much an opportunity for the instruc-
tor to learn about the students’ comprehension levels as for students
to develop deeper understanding of what they had done and how to
interpret it.
Ted stated that the philosophy informing his structured-active-
learning (SAL) method is that the great majority of students will suc-
ceed in taking responsibility for their own learning and become engaged
in a scientific discovery process if an instructor provides them with
enough support. The SAL method is designed to challenge students to
achieve difficult and sophisticated goals while providing them with the
necessary resources, motivation, and support structures.
Outcomes
Ted felt that his SAL course was highly successful at helping him
achieve his goals. In addition, an in-depth study of Ted’s course that

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explored the nature of students’ learning processes and assessed stu-
dent performance outcomes confirmed his perceptions of student out-
comes (Millar, S.B., Pasch, J., Penberthy, D.L., & Kosciuk, S.A., 1995;
Wright, J.C., Millar, S.B., Kosciuk, S.A., Penberthy, D.L., Williams, P.H.,
& Wambold, B.E., 1998). The course was highly effective both in terms
of creating a “learner-centered” environment and in fostering critical
thinking skills and understanding of the course material. Based on
these conclusions, and motivated by the NT group’s goal to test whether
methods proven to work for one professor could be “handed off” to an-
other, Ted felt that the next step was to demonstrate that others could
achieve the same results. Thus, he engaged a colleague to teach this
course using the SAL methods.
The Case of the Course Adapter (Peter)
Motivations for Change, Course Goals, and Strategies
Peter, a long-time colleague of Ted, had been teaching upper-division
undergraduate and graduate courses for over 20 years. His primary
undergraduate course was a medium-sized (50–100 students) sopho-
more/junior level chemistry course that included lab sections taught by
TAs. Although he used a fairly standard lecture for this course, he in-
corporated active and small-group learning in the laboratories: he had
students work in small groups on open-ended, real-world projects in
subject areas specified by him, within which students chose a specific
area.
Peter emphasized that although the lab sections were taught by TAs,
he was present at all times during them. He worked closely with the
students, providing them ongoing guidance through informal conver-
sations. He believed that the best model for education was the Oxford
University model of one-on-one interactions. He was highly invested in
teaching and had some of the same criticisms of the existing paradigm
in chemistry education as did Ted.
[Ted] and I both think that the teaching is really important. I’ve felt for
a long time that undergraduate teaching just does not accomplish proper
goals a lot of times. I don’t think that an undergraduate is any different
from a graduate student except in terms of the maturity, the total amount
of material they’ve seen. When they go through a course, I would like the
students to be able to deal with the subject matter in a way that’s very
similar to a graduate student’s approach . . . But most of our students
can’t. . . .

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Because Ted and Peter were friends and seemed to share the same
views on undergraduate education, Ted asked Peter to teach the SAL
analytical chemistry course for first-year students. Peter agreed, but
for several reasons he was somewhat unsure of his chances for success
in the course. First, he had never taught first-year students. Second, he
was uncomfortable with allowing the TAs to play a significant role in
advising the students on the open-ended group work. In part, he was
concerned because only one of his six TAs had experience using SAL
methods. Also, he felt that some of the TAs’ lab skills and knowledge
of the subject were insufficient. Third, he was concerned that students
would develop misconceptions about course content and achieve lower
levels of skill in experimentation and rigor in the lab if they received too
little guidance. While convinced that the course fostered creativity and
the ability to cope with new situations, he was concerned that students
might emerge from the course with weaker content knowledge and lab-
oratory skills and that this might hinder their success in upper-division
courses requiring chemistry.
Peter’s reservations about the SAL methods were implicit in how he
described his goals for the course:
[As a result of this course] I would like to see students be competent in
terms of solution chemistry, chemical equilibrium problems, . . . because
that’s the background they should get from this course that carries on to
the next. Since most of them are going into some type of biology or the
medical field, it’s really important that they can deal with those. By the
same token, I think it’s very important that they get certain lab skills that
other departments expect them to have. And that’s one thing that I think
[Ted] did not emphasize perhaps as much as probably is necessary. But
it’s a trade off. If we’re going to do these lab projects, it’s a kind of balance
that we have to work out. So, it depends on the kinds of problems that we
try to solve. I think those are the main [goals]. In addition, if we’re really
going to be able to deal with any of this correctly, [the students] have to
become problem solvers in a fairly sophisticated way.
Peter felt that students could develop their problem-solving abilities
if given the chance to experience what it was like to think for them-
selves through open-ended projects. However, because of the need to
build students’ knowledge base for subsequent courses, he also felt it
was important to insure that the course exposed them to the correct
ideas, even if this circumscribed the students’ freedom in the discovery
process. The following interview excerpt illustrates this point.
Interviewer: It seems that you have a larger set of primary goals than
[Ted] had. It seems that you place a greater emphasis on the lab skills
and on the applied understanding of the content.

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Peter: I think both of them have to be there . . . because when you move
into [higher level courses], those other departments really do depend on
these [lab skills] . . . and the content. [Ted’s] feeling is that most of the
[students in the course] are not going to be . . . using [these lab skills and
this content] all that much. The ability to think critically . . . and [use the]
scientific method is [his] main thing. And that’s probably true for maybe
half of this class, but I think there’s a good half of the class for which that
isn’t all of it.
Peter’s goals were evident in the way he defined success in the course.
For the open-ended laboratory projects, it was very important to him
that the majority of the students arrive at one of many possible correct
solutions the majority of the time. Moreover, his primary goal was for
students eventually to be able to solve problems efficiently, that is, with-
out going through a lengthy trial-and-error process. This contrasted sig-
nificantly with Ted’s primary goal of getting students to experience and
understand the scientific process by confronting successes and failures.
For Ted, success on the open-ended projects was less important than
making sure that students experienced the messiness of real science.
Once Peter began planning his course, he encountered another diffi-
culty: he had little specific information from Ted on the details of how he
had taught the course. Due to the nature of the research environment
in which Ted, the course designer, had been working, Ted had spent
little time documenting what he had done. So, although Peter had an
understanding of the nature of the assignments and the course materi-
als, he had few actual models from the original course. For example, he
had no detailed descriptions of the lab experiments because the labora-
tory instructions stated only the goals for the experiments. Though he
was adopting a full set of integrated teaching strategies, in some ways
he felt that he had to reinvent the wheel. In his first interview, he ex-
pressed his fear that he would fail to create successful course activities
based on Ted’s basic ideas, stating:
My main concern at this point in time is just the logistics of carrying all
this out and getting everything put together . . . I don’t know very much
about what [Ted] did. [I have talked with him], but he doesn’t have very
much documentation for many of the things that they did . . . The real
questions that I have are about the nitty gritty details, which are ab-
solutely crucial in this kind of thing. In the sciences you must have that
nailed down very well. Otherwise the whole thing’s a failure.
Given these factors, Peter’s primary personal goal in this experi-
ment was to see how the course as a whole and the individual inno-
vations would work. He saw himself as a participant in an educational

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experiment in which he was truly unsure of the outcome: “There were
several things within the course that were questions for me . . . Mostly
I was just trying to get a feeling for what would happen. Because [Ted]
talking about it is one thing, and really experiencing it is quite dif-
ferent.” Understandably, Peter felt considerable stress from the begin-
ning of the experiment, remarking that a primary goal for him was to
“survive.”
Peter tried to “adopt” the SAL course, that is, to teach the course
using all of the major course features that Ted had used. However,
he found it necessary to “adapt” the course for the following reasons:
1) he placed a greater emphasis on lab skills and content outcomes
than did Ted, 2) he lacked detailed information on the innovations,
and 3) he wanted to give the TAs less responsibility for guiding the
students.
First, Peter used a more traditional, non-interactive lecture format
than Ted had. He felt that the students’ need for background material
for the open-ended lab projects was too great to justify using lecture
time for significant student interaction. Second, he produced numerous
supplementary reading packets to provide students with information
they might need during the experiments. Third, to foster acquisition of
lab skills, he increased the number of “closed-ended” lab experiments.
Fourth, in contrast to Ted, who was available for consultation for only
parts of the lab periods, Peter maintained high levels of student contact
during labs. As in his upper-division course, he was available in a room
adjacent to the laboratories and spent the entire time fielding questions
from students. Although this practice was in line with his approach to
other courses that used TAs, he felt it was even more important in
this situation, due to his concerns about the teaching assistants’ lab
skills and content knowledge. By contrast, Ted expected the TAs to be
the primary guide for the students’ lab experimentation process. This
difference in the two professors’ views of the TAs may be attributable to
two inter-related factors. First, it may be that Ted had TAs with greater
teaching skill and experience. Secondly, Peter and Ted seemed to hold
differing views on the level of responsibility that was appropriate to give
a TA. This difference paralleled the differences in the way they viewed
the undergraduate students—with Ted giving more responsibility to
the TAs and students than Peter.
Another contrast was in the reward structure. Whereas Ted’s ap-
proach clearly rewarded students for demonstrating that they had en-
gaged in the scientific process and had learned about the process and
the content through doing so, Peter’s approach placed greater emphasis

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on students showing that they had achieved a working solution to the
lab experiments. Thus, while Ted used oral exams in the labs primarily
to explore the process that students had developed to solve an open-
ended problem, Peter used them to assess their learning process and to
determine whether they had achieved a satisfactory result.
In addition, Ted and Peter differed in the way that they responded
to students who seemed to resist the active learning approach. Ted ex-
plained that he and his TAs consistently discouraged students from
seeking spoon-fed answers by pushing them to think creatively and
not grading them primarily on whether or not they obtained a work-
ing answer. By contrast, Peter, strongly believing that students should
arrive at a working answer, would eventually help a student who re-
sisted the effort of thinking independently by suggesting a speciﬁc pos-
sible solution.
Outcomes
Peter indicated that his level of uncertainty about how well things
would go never subsided during the experiment and that he constantly
felt overwhelmed by the magnitude of the changes he was making. He
frequently emphasized that the context—ﬁrst-year students and some
of the course content—was completely new to him and that he, the TAs,
and the students were inexperienced with many of the active learning
strategies used in the course. He explained that, as a result of their
lack of experience with the new approach, they all spent much more
time than expected and generally found the course stressful. Moreover,
Peter’s research program was preempted for at least one semester, due
to the time demands of this course.
In contrast to the student feedback we gathered for Ted’s course, we
have very limited information on the students’ point of view or student
learning outcomes for Peter’s course. We did not conduct an in-depth
study on the experiences of the students in Peter’s course for three
reasons: 1) we wanted to give the course adopter a chance to experiment
with and become comfortable with the teaching innovations prior to
delving into the students’ learning experiences and outcomes; 2) we
had limited resources; and 3) we were most interested in exploring
the faculty change process. We do know that the student responses
to a written survey on their beliefs about the value of the course and
the teaching methods were bimodal. A sizable group of the students
reported positive learning experiences; for others, the experience was
negative and left them feeling frustrated.

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At the end of the semester, Peter indicated that he was not willing
to teach the analytical chemistry course again in the same way. Both
he and the TAs conveyed that their experience had been difficult and
that they were unsure the extra time and energy were commensurate
with what they felt the students had gained. Thus it appears that the
hand-off was not successful.
However, we learned from Peter in spring 2000 that he has come to
feel more positive about his experience with the course and its impact
on the students. He explained that he had decided to teach the course
again because he now had a much better understanding of what Ted was
attempting and of what he himself wants to achieve and how. Lengthy
conversations with Ted had left him with a better understanding of
what Ted expected of the students and of what Ted actually did in the
course. Peter stated that he lacked much of this knowledge in spring
1996, and was thus forced to operate on the basis of many assumptions
that, in fact, were not accurate. He explained that another factor in his
decision to teach this course again is the time he had had to reflect on
and understand his experiences in 1996 and to plan out his own SAL
version of the course.
He proceeded to teach the course again in spring 2001, adapting some
of the SAL methods to suit his own goals and style. In response to our
inquiry about this second experience with the course, he wrote to us
that, “It was the best class I’ve ever seen, and it ended up with an
astonishingly high class average–no curve was used. These are very
bright young people!”
Conclusions
One of the primary factors in the failure of the hand-off was that
Peter lacked personal motivation to teach the SAL course. He indicated
that his main reason for taking on this challenge was to help Ted test
his and the NT group’s premise that the course could be adapted. Peter
knew that it was important that Ted find someone to engage in this
educational experiment, and he considered this a personal favor to his
long-time colleague.
In addition, at Ted’s suggestion, Peter agreed to recreate fully the
original SAL course. Peter did not seek out individual course compo-
nents that interested him and then conduct his own experiment with
them. Had this been the case, it is more likely that his experiment
would have been successful. By contrast, Ted’s growing interest in the
use of active learning had led over the years to a passionate exploration

P1: LHE/hgi P2: GKZ
of these methods. During interviews with Ted, it was clear that he had
a great deal of fun trying out these new teaching methods. We believe
this is an important reason for his success with them. The literature
about faculty culture makes it clear that personal motivation to change
is a critical factor in successful reform (Candy & Borthwick, 1994;
Scott & Weeks, 1996).
Another major factor was that Peter was on unfamiliar ground and
undertook too much change at once. For example, he had not previously
taught some of the course material or first-year students. Moreover,
except for open-ended lab projects, he had no prior experience with the
specific active-learning teaching strategies.
Still another important determinant in the outcome of this experi-
ment was that Peter had little support from Ted, as there was scant
documentation of the details of implementation. This lack of support
and documentation arose in part due to the circumstances under which
Ted created the course. While articulating his new goals for student
learning and designing and testing a set of new course elements to
help achieve these goals, Ted worked for the most part in isolation. In
this regard, his behavior was entirely consistent with the highly indi-
vidualistic culture of his institution and department. This culture was
expressed, in part, by the absence of either a central or college faculty
development office to which he might turn for ideas and advice. In ad-
dition, Ted had no release time to develop the course or to mentor his
colleague in adapting some of his methods. Thus, when it came time for
Peter to adapt the course, he was, in large part, on his own.
Finally, Peter’s efforts were less successful than he had hoped be-
cause there were important differences between his and Ted’s learning
goals. As it may not be clear why this might cause the problems that
Peter encountered, we will explain in greater detail. This conclusion
is supported by related findings from Lutterodt (1980), who studied
factors relevant to successful adaptation of science education curricu-
lum materials. Lutterodt explains that, when the goals of the designer
and potential adapter are not in concert, adaptation requires funda-
mental changes that “affect the essential coherence of a curriculum
so that . . . adaptation is no longer the most appropriate development
strategy” (p. 132). In the case studies at hand, although both profes-
sors (Ted and Peter) sought to foster critical thinking skills, Peter was
particularly concerned with insuring that the students understood the
course material and developed the necessary laboratory skills. This dif-
ference was crucial because promoting mastery of course material was
only a secondary goal of Ted’s course strategies: he designed the course

P1: LHE/hgi P2: GKZ
activities (including the grading structure) primarily to force students
to engage in a discovery process by which their critical thinking skills
would be further developed—even if that process resulted in some mis-
conceptions. When Peter used Ted’s strategies, he unintentionally dis-
rupted the essential coherence of the original course.
Three examples will sufﬁce to illustrate the problems arising from
the differences in the goals of the two professors. One example is Peter’s
decision to produce handouts and spend eight hours each week inter-
acting with the students during lab time in order to ensure that they
learned the material correctly. This resulted in an excessive demand on
his time. Another example is that, while requiring approximately the
same number of assignments geared toward promoting critical thinking
as Ted did, Peter added a number of “canned” labs designed to teach
skills. According to TA feedback, the students felt continually pressed
for time and overwhelmed by the amount of work they had to do and the
body of material they were expected to comprehend. Also, it is likely that
the students had insufﬁcient uninterrupted time to focus on the open-
ended projects. A third example is that Peter unintentionally confused
the students about his expectations of them. According to some of the
TAs, the students interpreted some of his actions to mean that a good
grade depended more on achieving a working solution, although he told
the students that their goal was to work creatively and independently
on the open-ended projects. In part, this situation arose because Peter
felt it necessary to act as the primary resource for some lab sections,
having a stronger need than Ted to control the learning environment
and having been assigned a group of TAs that he felt were not very well
prepared. In this role, he apparently led some students to believe that
he had a pre-determined “right answer.” Once this idea began circu-
lating through the student grapevine, the open-ended character of the
problems—essential to their effectiveness in developing independent
critical thinking—was subverted.
In the end, the difference between the two professors’ goals and the
resulting changes Peter made may have resulted in the latter feeling
that his efforts were not successful. He felt he achieved his goals for too
few students to justify all the hard work of everyone involved.
Lessons on Disseminating Innovation
The contrasts between the change processes experienced by Ted and
Peter provide a basis for lessons that might guide faculty and faculty

P1: LHE/hgi P2: GKZ
developers seeking to promote and support faculty innovation. Below
we present four such lessons.
Change Should be Motivated by Personal Interest
in Particular Innovations
We recommend that faculty undertake innovations only as they are
motivated by personal interest. This suggestion is based not only on
our study, but on the literature on best practice in faculty development
(Apps, 1985; Candy & Borthwick, 1994; Hutchinson & Huberman, 1993;
Louckes-Horseley & Stiegelbauer, 1991; Scott & Weeks, 1996).
As Ted observed the way his students were learning prior to changing
his course and began discussing active learning methods with a more
experienced colleague, he developed a growing interest in experiment-
ing with new pedagogical approaches. In particular, he was drawn to
the use of groupwork; open-ended lab experiments; take-home, coopera-
tive exams; and reading research papers. When he began to incorporate
some of these teaching strategies into the SAL course, he felt excited
and believed that he would have success with the methods. As it turns
out, he found some strategies more effective than others and modiﬁed
his course accordingly over a period of years. But on the whole, his pre-
diction that he would improve student learning through structuring the
learning environment in a new way was borne out in reality. In partic-
ular, he found the students to be more conversant with the material
and more willing and able to engage in active discovery than he had
previously imagined.
Peter approached the SAL course with an entirely different attitude.
As stated previously, he became involved in the course as a favor to
the course developer. He did not choose the innovations he used in the
course out of his own enthusiasm for the methods. For example, al-
though he believed in and had experience with open-ended lab projects,
he expressed no particular interest in the use of cooperative exams or
in having students read research papers. He approached those ideas
and other course aspects with skepticism, and this was apparent to
his teaching assistants and students. In a situation where all involved
are experimenting with new methods, it was essential that the leader,
the course professor, believe his or her efforts would result in impor-
tant payoffs for the students. In this case, Peter had little such faith.
This, according to some of the TAs, created doubt among both TAs and
students, which in turn undermined the efforts of the instructors and
weakened the students’ conﬁdence in the instructors. Based on research

P1: LHE/hgi P2: GKZ
cited by Angelo (1993), we speculate that these doubts about the course
methods weakened students’ willingness to assume the higher level of
responsibility for their own learning that is essential to the effective-
ness of Ted’s SAL approach.
It is of interest that, as noted above, Peter eventually taught the
course again, but only in his own way. In particular, he emphasized
the small-group, open-ended laboratory projects and scaled back other
active learning activities. These modifications are consistent with his
initial views about the high value of exploratory laboratory experiences
and his skepticism about the feasibility and effectiveness of some of the
other innovations.
Innovations Should be Matched to the Instructor’s Goals
for Student Learning
Consistent with the relevant literature (Angelo, 1993), our study sug-
gests that it is critical that the strategies being adapted are matched to
the adapting professor’s student learning goals. Ted felt frustrated that
his students were not developing the kinds of scientific thinking skills
that he wanted them to have. This frustration led him to change his
course through the use of teaching innovations that not only attracted
him but that, on the basis of discussions with students and an experi-
enced colleague, he believed would help him achieve his student learn-
ing goals. Peter also was dissatisfied with undergraduate education and
felt it was necessary to provide students with more “real-world” science
experiences. However, he used the SAL innovations primarily because
Ted had presented them as integral to the course, without considering
beforehand if they would help him achieve his own goals for student
learning. As illustrated above, this led to difficulties for all involved.
Change Should be Undertaken in a Gradual Way
We recommend that faculty attempt only those innovations for which
they feel ready, try only one or two innovations at a time, and work
within a familiar context. The importance of this recommendation is
illustrated by this study and supported by the literature on best prac-
tice in educational innovation (Louckes-Horsley & Stiegelbauer, 1991;
Kozma, 1985).
Ted was clearly ready for the changes he made. He not only imple-
mented innovations in the context of a course he had taught for almost

P1: LHE/hgi P2: GKZ
two decades, but also experimented with several different innovations
prior to attempting a fully integrated SAL version of his course. He
undertook an ambitious, even risky, set of innovations by using a me-
thodical, experimental process. Because he was deeply interested in
each innovation, he observed its effects carefully. By introducing only
one or two new “variables” at a time, he was able to explore the effects
of each innovation. In addition, because he was working in a familiar
context, with students for whom he had clearly articulated learning
goals, he had the confidence to eventually combine several of the inno-
vations and see how they worked together. By contrast, Peter attempted
to implement several innovative strategies, for many of which he did
not feel ready, in a course he was teaching for the first time. Also, be-
cause he was inexperienced with almost all of the strategies, he was
unable to understand how each one worked individually, let alone how
the various strategies worked in combination with one another. Had
Peter attempted to incorporate his own variations of one or two of Ted’s
innovations in the upper-division course that he had taught for many
years, we believe he would not have experienced such discomfort and
would have had greater success.
Innovation Needs to be Supported
Finally, we believe that support and training prior to and during
the use of an innovation, possibly including release time to prepare for
and implement the changes, may be critical for successful adaptation
of reforms. This study and the literature about best practice in inno-
vation, including Kozma’s 1985 piece, support this recommendation.
For two reasons, Ted was not fully able to support Peter. First, during
the development of his own course, he did not have time to reflect on
his practice and document the details of his strategies. Thus, when it
came time for him to help a colleague take over the course, he was less
aware of his own process and had little documentation to share. Having
to develop instructional materials while also learning how to use new
teaching strategies created a highly stressful situation for Peter, who
spent an inordinate amount of time creating materials and figuring out
how to implement the strategies. Second, Ted’s teaching and research
load did not permit him to provide Peter with the ongoing support he
needed during the experiment. For example, when Peter’s students be-
gan floundering during the open-ended laboratory projects, his intuition
told him to give students more and more help, to the point that some stu-
dents felt they were given advice toward a right solution. Had the two

P1: LHE/hgi P2: GKZ
professors been in closer contact, Ted could have shared his experience
that this desire to help is a natural tendency but one to be resisted in
order to maintain the integrity of the projects. Further, a faculty devel-
oper, had one been available, might have alerted him to this problem.
In conclusion, we recommend the use of existing models of faculty
development that integrate the above lessons. One such program is
“collaborative staff development,” where working groups of faculty who
are involved or interested in the same types of curricular or pedagog-
ical changes support each other (Scott & Weeks, 1996). Another such
program is based on the idea of “the ally within.” In this program, fac-
ulty change agents are selected by departmental nominations based
on their past teaching accomplishments and funded to support change
from within their departments (Candy & Borthwick, 1994).
Based on what we know about faculty culture, we believe that those
who are interested in promoting reform need to foster a process in which
faculty (1) try innovations that interest them, (2) pursue methods that
are aligned with their goals, (3) undertake change in a gradual way,
and (4) are supported by colleagues and resources. Finally, we suggest
that “adoption,” a term that implies taking a fully formed innovation
and simply plugging it into an existing course or program, is not viable.
In so saying, we reafﬁrm a principle articulated by Angelo (1993): “The
operating maxim is: Adapt, don’t adopt” (p. 4).
Acknowledgments
This work was sponsored by the National Science Foundation un-
der grant DUE-9455928. We would like to express our gratitude to the
cooperating faculty members and teaching assistants whose generous
donation of time made this study possible.
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