Innovative Software Use in an Educational Setting

In the last decade, an increasing number of educational institutions have been revamping their curriculum to take advantage of available information technologies. The purpose of this book is to address a phenomenon observed at a high school after the school administration mandated the use of a software package in certain courses. After initial mandatory adoption, some students started voluntarily extending their use of the tool to other classes and to non-school related tasks. This book develops a model that can be used to explain the innovative uses of the software when the initial use is mandatory. Innovative use is defined as voluntarily expanding the use of software to new tasks and new settings after mandatory adoption for a specific task in a specific setting. Understanding the factors that affect students¿ innovative use can help educators in designing strategies to raise the level of student learning and performance.