Educational innovation projects in Dutch higher education: Coping with organizational challenges

​Understanding the process of embedding educational innovations in higher education is necessary to develop better strategies for sustainable, large-scale educational innovation. However, initiated innovation projects are often not appropriately evaluated to identify lessons learned. The aim of this study is to investigate how project leaders of innovation projects are coping with organizational challenges. We analysed focus group data of project leaders of innovation projects at Dutch higher education institutions. We found that these project leaders could cope with challenges cognitively by assessing the situations (primary appraisal) and by identifying actions that could have been taken (secondary appraisal), and in smaller extend were able to behaviourally cope with these challenges through their actions (coping efforts). Results suggest that bottom-up educational innovation can build up momentum, yet top-down facilitation and support is critical to enable organizational embeddedness and long-term sustainability.