It is a given that higher education institutions are putting more resources into pedagogical overhauls and technology of late; yet in the end the behavioral response of the student will determine whether an educational innovation is a success or not. Where traditional administrative evaluations are wont to concentrate on infrastructural deployment figures, they do not always give due consideration to the way learners make themselves at home with new instructional paradigms, either emotionally or in their conduct. We have set out to examine in a systematic fashion the range of behavioural reactions from undergraduates to such innovations as AI assessment tools, virtual reality and blended learning. Our mixed-methods approach is rigorous in design, marrying large scale quantitative tracking to the qualitative side of pedagogy. A cross-sectional survey of 850 students in different faculties was put in place to obtain quantitative measures of cognitive engagement and the frequency of behavioural adaptation. These numbers were then triangulated against what we learned from 60 semi-structured interviews with student union officials, department chairs and instructional designers. The dataset has been put through its paces with advanced statistical modelling for reliability and predictive validity, via confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) and hierarchical multiple regression. On the qualitative front, thematic content analysis of the interview transcripts turned up some formidable psychological impediments to adoption, in the form of technological friction and unease at the pace of change. What the empirical evidence shows is a clear correlation: those students who are pro-active and possess a good deal of cognitive flexibility have a 74% greater enthusiasm for and acceptance of innovation than one would find in a peer resistant to change. Hierarchical multiple regression bears this out, with proactive behavioural engagement being a highly significant positive predictor of adoption (β = 0.66, p < 0.001). One sees the opposite effect from unmitigated resistance and anxiety, which have a marked negative bearing on satisfaction with learning (β = -0.50, p < 0.01). In short, if educational institutions are to see off top-down rollouts of technology they need to be about the business of instilling in their students a sense of readiness and psychological safety.