Zoellner, Kate

English

Eastern Michigan University: Digital Commons@EMU

Page 2 LOEX Quarterly  Volume 33 Book Review: The Change Function: Why Some Technologies Take Off and Others Crash and Burn .  By Pip Coburn (Portfol io, 2006)   Kate Zoellner, The University of Montana-Missoula Technological change comes fast and furious for today's library instructor: Should you be using Second Life in your instruction? Are you using course management sys-tems to their full-effectiveness?  The Change Function presents a useful way of evaluating the potential success of these and other new technologies and methods, and also provides strategies for boosting the success of the technologies libraries do choose to offer.   A former Global Technology Strategist for invest-ment house UBS, Coburn has closely studied a myriad of technology products and trends over the past decade.  He explains his ideas through the case study method, with evaluations of past market failures (e.g., tablet PCs) and predictions on future failures (e.g., the entertainment PC) and successes (e.g., flat panel TVs).  Coburn argues that an individual will not adopt a new technology unless the crisis they perceive they have without the technology clearly outweighs the perceived pain associated with adopting it.  To see this simply, one could use the follow-ing formula (not intended to be numerically calculated):  According to Coburn, when users are presented with a new technology they have a range of reactions from indifference to crisis. For example, a user experiences a crisis when all his friends have an iPod and he feels em-barrassed to admit he doesn’t.  He feels out of the loop and behind the times. How is this resolved?  Often with a new iPod.  However, not every new effort of technology leads to a change.  If someone uses DSL for high-speed internet access, the person does not automatically switch over to a cable modem, the technically faster option.  Why?  There is typically no crisis for the customer; their current method of internet access is sufficient.   In sum, crises in The Change Function are what com-pel users to take action. While “crisis” often is perceived as a negative word, it can lead to positive change in this context. If a user does not see or experience a crisis, tech-nologies will not be adopted. On the other side of the equation, Coburn defines users’ perceived pains of adopt-ing new technologies to include issues we readily recog-nize: the discomforts of researching product information, reading instruction manuals, spending time with customer service, or learning something new. Coburn believes his theory to be a user-centric solution to the technology in-dustry’s failing supplier-centric “build it and they will come” modus operandi that rests largely on lowering prices and increasing technological capacity.   While not developed with libraries specifically in mind, there are a number of ways we can apply to librar-ies Coburn’s theory and the larger concepts he raises. One clear application is to examine specific services we target to set end-users, such as virtual reference for dis-tance education students, bibliographic management soft-ware for doctoral students, or instruction services for un-dergraduate students.    Here’s how such an analysis might take shape: to evaluate the instruction services a library provides to un-dergraduates, the library instructor would first look at the crises and perceived pains of adopting instructional ser-vices for both faculty and undergraduate students.  - I’d hypothesize that crises for faculty include avail-able teaching time, students’ work not meeting their ex-pectations, and the desire to have students meet the learn-ing outcomes of their course.   - Pains of adopting instruction might include schedul-ing and learning how to work effectively with a librarian.   - Crises for students include time, information over-load, the assumption that peers know how to use the li-brary, and the desire to succeed in their classes.   - Pains of adopting the content of instruction include selecting appropriate databases and using their features, translating a research question into a searchable query, selecting relevant results; and being able to connect the lesson with previous knowledge and apply it to a given assignment.  User Crisis > Total Perceived Pain of Adoption = Adopt technology User Crisis < Total Perceived Pain of Adoption =  Reject technology  After compiling the crises and pains of adopting in-struction services, the next step, according to Coburn, is using this information to determine how to increase the adoption and relevance of the services: How can we in-crease the perceived crises of our end-users? How can we reduce the pains they perceive in adopting our services?   To increase user crisis with faculty, we can discuss the importance of teaching their students information re-search skills, such as by offering to analyze a selection of past papers, which often can lead to a discussion about improving the quality of the students’ source material. We also can emphasize the importance of scheduling li-brary instruction sessions at the point in the semester when students are working on their assignments, when students are most likely experiencing a crisis. With stu-dents, we can include in our sessions specific examples of sites that seem on the surface authoritative but are not (e.g., www.martinlutherking.org) or a discussion of the benefits, and notable pitfalls, of resources like Wikipedia, such as by showing how to edit the site and examples of inaccurate articles.   To reduce the perceived pain of utilizing library in-struction, we can provide faculty with examples of course integrated instruction, and schedule instruction into their syllabus. For students to adopt the research strategies and tools taught in library instruction, we can compare tools they use on a daily basis (i.e., social software, free search engines) with those offered via the library; showing stu-dents how to transfer and build upon knowledge they al-ready have lessens the perception that they are learning something completely new. Additionally, we can provide access points for use of our services at times of need and within services currently used. For example, we can pro-vide access to library resources via course management systems, links to virtual reference and online tutorials on our database pages, and we can teach students how to discover articles in our subscription databases via Google Scholar.   Additionally, placing online tutorials on YouTube or providing instruction within Second Life are some new services libraries are providing. Before a library instruc-tor perceives this as a library crises and a technology strategy they must adopt, it seems Coburn would have us question what user-crises this service is addressing. Al-LOEX Quarterly  Number 4 Page 3 though the pain of adoption may be slight, according to Coburn’s function, a crisis must still be present for the user to take action and adopt a new service.   Thinking through how we address and make apparent our users’ crises and lessen their perceived pains of adopting the services we offer is a fruitful exercise. While Coburn’s user-centered solution to technology ser-vices and adoption presented in The Change Function is not a radical notion for our profession, the particular the-ory he presents does provide a variant lens through which to gauge vendors’ products, the services we offer, and new technologies we consider offering. Check out The Change Function from your local library for a quick read on a rainy day.    

Book Review: The Change Function

https://commons.emich.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1086&amp;context=loexquarterly

Book Review: The Change Function

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