Balancing the Influence of Driving and Restricting Factors to Use Active Learning

A System Approach to Instructional Change in Academia

“…For example, one factor that seems to be a driver, dedication of faculty's time, could become a barrier. Indeed, there is evidence of potential time savings when faculty adopt RBIS [22,23] but, at first, the adoption of RBIS will likely increase the faculty's time commitments [38]. Moreover, complex systems do not have a right answer or root causes; they have, in its place, causal relationships [6].…”

“…Symbols and Artifacts entail rituals, traditions, events, or historical representations of the organizational culture [17]. Finelli, et al [22] and Pembridge and Jordan [23] found that one of the traditions of the academic culture is the necessity of having a permanent heavy workload, which reflects the importance of being highly busy most of the time. This factor could be a barrier to instructional change because any innovation adds to the current heavy workload sustained by faculty.…”

“…The available resources and infrastructure are also potential drivers or barriers to instructional change. The lack of sufficient institutional resources and appropriate facilities reduces the likelihood of instructional change [23,24] because they impact the expectancy of success of implementation of RBIS [26]. Similarly, allocation of institutional resources can be barriers to change because they are often allocated in ways that can be detrimental to teaching quality or that emphasize productivity over teaching quality [32].…”

“…Time allotted and dedicated to adopting the change initiative could be one of the substantial barriers to RBIS adoption. As with many activities within academia, adopting RBIS is also a process that requires time to learn its pedagogical principles [24,31], time for preparation of class activities [23,30] and, as mentioned before, class time for its implementation [23,26,[30][31][32]35].…”

“…It starts with attention to faculty´s self-confidence in their professional abilities [22] and their beliefs on their pedagogical competence [24,26,40]. It continues with attention to faculty´s self-confidence of knowing how they could effectively use RBIS [23,41,47].…”