Work in Progress: Building Capacity for Research-Based Adaptation of Educational Innovation

This paper reports on a novel and strategic approach to building across a college faculty the capacity to participate in high quality evaluative research on teaching innovation. There are many factors pointing to acceleration of opportunities for innovation - and the need to develop systematic means for engaging disciplinary faculty in testing and adapting promising innovations. The paper reports on ways to instantiate what is referred to by NSF and others at the cycle of innovation. Our approach is to develop a "turnkey toolkit" by which research-based innovations are organized for cycle of innovation testing by faculty. The toolkit for each innovation is designed to give time-pressed faculty the means to undertake high quality adaptation research. A toolkit includes the materials needed for implementation; IRB guidance, a summary of relevant theoretical frameworks, active research questions and ongoing findings; and methodological and data collection templates for testing the innovation