Module # 3 Diffusion

This is going to get complicated because of the differnt levels that are involved.



1) Communication Channels to consider for change.

• The first line of communication is the student workers. If they don't understand and buy into the change this whole project is dead.


• The Office of Disability Services Staff. They are important because they are my co-workers and interact with students. Any major changes to a process must be approved by this group. The director is the lead person who will say and fund any changes.


• Students who use alternate format as the end users of our work. Their requests are simple, quality work and quick. Explaination of the process or a hold-up in the process maybe required.

2) Innovation-Decision Process- Knowledge Step

• Very first question asked by the staff "What are other colleges doing?" Research needs to be done to see what other colleges are doing, especially colleges and universities "like" Syracuse University. I would also check with colleges who are doing a high volume of alternate format (not necessarily like Syracuse University). It will be important to look at the new technology that is coming out to do this.


• Getting feedback from the student workers. The majority of our student workers are Graduate Enginneer students (very detail oriented). We always look at their suggestions to improve work-flow and process. They are also up to date on some technology that I do not have access to.


• Vendors of products. A number of vendors understand what we are trying to accomplish and will send us information of products that may improve our process.


• Book Vendors and publishers. In New York there are laws requiring publishers to provide textbooks in alternate format. The key term here is textbook because every book used in a class room is not nesscerarily a "textbook". So publisher are trying to do the right thing and provide as many titles as they can. Other publishers do not. The thing is to get a notification from the publisher that they are going to provide a text in accessible form or not.


• Faculty. It is had to obtain textbooks when faculty wait to the start of class to determine what text they are going to use. We notify instructors (if we know who is teaching) requesting the titles, authors, and ISBN numbers of the text they going to use. Many are good to let us know but there are a number of courses that do not.

Innovation-Decision Process- Persuastion Step

• Once the information has been gathered from the different sources, it needs to be reduced to lowest possible terms for presenation at a staff meeting (remember the ODS staff has to approve major changes). The areas that have to addressed time to implement, cost both money and manpower, how is this going to improve services to the students we serve? In short how is going to affect our

Innovation- Decision Process- Implementation

• The implementation will consist of training for the production workers to demonstrat any new equipment and/or programs. Process meetings for the administrative staff to explain/show new or modified process procedures. Checking to see if the process is being followed by all. Status reports to the staff.

Innovation-Decision Process- Confirmation

• To montior the process to see if there are problems or difficulties and where. May need to reenforce key topics from training. Look to improve the whole process as this is some what like an assembly line which one person or function can hold up the whole process. May have to adjust personel to fit the new work process.

Other Factors.

We can only improve what we do to a certain degree. In the future, seeking the cooperation of faculty to get titles of texts to us in a timely manner will improve our overall process (less rushing and distruction of books). This is going to be a change that is going to evolve over time but as we continue to ask for the faculty's cooperation in doing the "Right Thing to Do!"