Low cost tablets as disruptive educational innovation: modeling its diffusion within Indian K12 system

Abstract

The world of today is not looking for innovations that are mere incremental but those that are disruptive. Aakash, the Low Cost Tablet (LCT) initiative by Indian govt. was launched in 2011 amidst dominance by the likes of Apple, Amazon, and Samsung etc. Single most objective of this initiative was affordable ICT learning tool for the 220+ million students. LCT like Aakash can be seen as a disruptive innovation from the as they are simple to use, cheap, low performing, targeted at low portion of mainstream market and focused on social sectors like education, health to increase access and equity. Within Rogers theory of Diffusion of Innovation, we propose a framework for innovation attributes that can significantly predict student and teacher behavior intentions and motivations towards LCT for use in classrooms. Authors investigate the innovation attributes for adoption of LCT in a social group comprising of (N=121) potential-adopter students and teachers from India. The results revealed that motivations for adopting LCT are strongly associated with innovation attributes like relative advantage, compatibility, ease of use, peer influence, perceived enjoyment and perceived usefulness. Overall, both teachers and students expressed positive attitude towards using LCT as it enhanced their digital literacy skills. Bigger question is to identify what kind of new teacher training program, models and approaches and learning environment are required for successful adoption of educational innovation like LCT. Findings contribute to the design of new pedagogical models that maximizes learning potential of LCTs for K12 education.