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Abstract
Faculty members play a valuable role in the reputation of higher education institutions and the academic success of adult learners. It is imperative for faculty members to be adept with using the institutions learning management system to maintain their instructional materials and teach using a technological system. Consequentially, higher education institutions are frequently upgrading or transitioning to a new learning management system to keep pace with technology and to rival other institutions. Unfortunately, in some instances, when a new learning management system is adopted, the institutions training practices for faculty members are neglected, and they are insufficiently prepared to operate the new learning management system. The purpose of this study was to examine the learning experiences of faculty at a state technical college who were required to participate in a new technology adoption of the Blackboard Learning Management System. Two research questions guided this study were: (1) What were the common learning experiences of faculty participating in the adoption of a new learning management system? and (2) How did the participating faculty navigate the requirement to learn or adapt to a new system? This qualitative case study consisted of eight participants: three full-time faculty members and five adjunct faculty members from different schools within a state technical college. The age range of participants was from 36 to 55, and all of the participants were women. The data corpus consisted of semi-structured interviews, document reviews, and observational memos. Four themes emerged from this study where participants perceived that: (a) Training occurred without stakeholders input, (b) Training was informative and burdensome to participants, (c) Participants underutilized training sessions, and (d) Participants designed their own learning experiences. There were also two conclusions drawn from this study: (1) The common learning experiences of the group were frustrating and did not sufficiently fulfill the needs of the participants and (2) Faculty navigated the requirement to learn a new system by using their prior knowledge as educators to create a process of self-directed, collaborative learning approaches, and looked beyond the management system that was assigned to examine similar systems that more directly served their needs.