The Concerns-Based Adoption Model (CBAM), a representation of the process by which an educational institution adopts an innovation, views adoption as a developmental process involving complex interaction between an adopting institution, a user system, and a resource system. The resource system is usually a formal organization whose expert knowledge of the innovation is available to the user system. This interaction, called collaborative linkage, is ideally characterized by open communication, which allows the resource system to assess the individual user's needs and concerns, and to select personalized intervention strategies based on this assessment. It is hypothesized that there are different, identifiable stages of concern about, and levels of use of an innovation. The user system's advancement to higher levels of use and concern is a developmental process. The intervention strategies of the resource system are aimed at answering the user's concerns, arousing higher concerns, and thereby advancing the level of use of the innovation. (Author)