Dayton Business Journal...
Technology invades college campuses
by Laura Englehart
Sunday, July 31, 2011 

As students head back to college in coming months, they’ll bring with them the latest technology, including Android phones and iPads. But their personal devices are just part of the high-tech world of collegiate education. 

Rapid industry changes have forced universities to abandon previous teaching methods and evolve their classrooms to better relate to students. 

Some Dayton-area universities have worked to incorporate technology in classrooms to their advantage, allowing teachers to interact with students without chalk and blackboards and skip what one administrator calls the “sage on the stage” routine. 

But while technology has worked to engage more students in college classrooms, it simultaneously has provided distractions to learning. 

“From a classroom perspective, there’s a lot of change that has happened,” said David Wright, Office of Curriculum Innovation and E-Learning director at the University of Dayton . 

The most noteworthy change in tech operations at UD applies only to incoming freshmen. For years, the university required students to purchase their laptop computers directly from the school, which provided tech support on campus. However, this school year, students can purchase their own machines to use. 

Campus-wide this fall, UD will migrate its communications system from Lotus Notes to Google Apps business class, which provides e-mail, calendar and group document-revision options. Miami University will replace its student-teacher content sharing system, Blackboard, with Sakai. 

As Wright State University transitions from quarters to semesters this fall, administrators have retooled and added classes, including a course on mobile devices, said Maggie Veres, senior lecturer and educational technology program adviser at WSU. 

At Miami University, students have started to develop their own mobile technology, such as apps for Apple Inc. ‘s iPhone and Google Inc. ‘s Android operating system, that provide news and notices on upcoming events. 

“Things like smartphones and tablet computers are starting to drive what decisions we make to support learning and teaching,” Wright said. “Even as we talk about student computer requirements, it won’t take long before students bring tablets. It hasn’t happened, yet.” 

An issue with tablets, such as the iPad, and classroom use is its digital keyboard. The University of Notre Dame tested iPads in a management class and students said it wasn’t good for note-taking, according to a story in the Chronicle of Higher Education. 

However, tablets have advantages such as their smaller size and extended battery life so students can carry them around. 

More tablets are hitting the market, which will surely find their way to colleges. Dell Inc.has announced it will produce a tablet with the Microsoft Corp. operating system. Hewlett-Packard launched its Wi-Fi TouchPad this month, and Apple is rumored to be releasing the new iPad 3 later this year. 

And Intel Corp. has unveiled a plan for a new group of laptop computers to challenge the popularity of the iPad and other tablet devices. Amazon.com Inc. also is rumored to be releasing a tablet of its own soon, which has garnered a lot of buzz lately. 

All of these new tablets hitting the market means sooner rather than later many college students and professors will start finding ways to incorporate them into their everyday routine, much as businesses have started adopting the mobile tablets int he workplace. 

Advances and downsides 

To reach students in classes, teachers have continued to implement new resources as they become more available, such as clickers, which allow students to quickly respond to questions with a button click, and teachers display results immediately. 

“We’ve used (clickers) for about five or six years, but they’re becoming much more mainstream,” said Skip Benanati, Decision Sciences and Management Information Systems Department chair at Miami University. 

Some universities require students to purchase clickers and bring them to certain classes. Other classes have started to rely more on laptop computers and wireless Internet services during lectures. Still others do not even need classrooms to hold discussions. 

This summer, UD delivered 140 classes online, and WSU students in an instructional design course must conduct a class using Illuminate, a Web-based program that allows them to interact and even record what happens. 

Whatever the new technology in place, it has changed the way teachers provide information to students in many positive ways. 

For instance, rather than providing new content to students in classrooms, teachers can send it to students online, and then discuss it in class, which better meshes with evolving learning styles, Wright said. 

“That has meant that students are more engaged in their learning. When and where they consume the content is up to them; they have freedom of choice, and it more readily fits in with learning styles that we might have.” 

But in the same breath, it has meant that students can easily become distracted. 

“The biggest (disadvantage) that I see is that students get so wrapped up in technology that you can’t get them to put it away,” Benanati said. “At times, I’ll tell them, ‘We don’t need laptops today; please close your laptops.’” 

Benanati requires students using laptops to take notes to sit near the front of the classroom. 

In addition, quizzes that students complete online present an ethics challenge: Certainly a student could have another student take the quiz without his teacher knowing, Benanati said. 

Even electronic textbooks, still gaining popularity, though not widely used, could pose a new problem in the way that students read and retain material. 

When readers browse Web sites, their eyes moves in an “F” pattern across the page and to the bottom, Wright said. 

“If students are wired to read that way and they go to read a (print) textbook, that ‘F’ will be for ‘fail,’” he said. 

Meanwhile, as technology continues to change, teachers and administrators must work tirelessly to stay up on the latest and greatest. 

At WSU, Veres said she encourages teachers to utilize more online resources and make classes more interactive with podcasts, virtual lectures and video and audio files. Currently, she’s enrolled in a MOOK — massive open online course — with 2,600 others who listen to experts and share online teaching tips and success stories. 

No matter the method, there’s no question that educators must adapt, said Wright. 

“We’re going to be completely surrounded by this technology wherever we go ... we need to think differently about how we teach students. We’ve always thought about the content; now we have to teach students to think.” 

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