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Mobile Computing >> Imagination on the Move
6/24/2005
Behind the scenes, however, CIO Stephen Landry says that technology officials knew they had to take additional steps to ensure that students used the laptops as part of their everyday experiences. The first approach to this strategic enforcement of mobile computing was what Landry calls “curricular integration,” an effort to support and encourage faculty to integrate the use of laptops in the curriculum. At the center of this endeavor is the Teaching, Learning, and Technology (TLT) Center, a multi-disciplinary facility that financially motivates educators to build entire lessons around laptops: The center doles out a total of $250,000 in multi-year grants to academic departments willing to redesign core courses around mobile technology. Paul Fisher, the center’s director, says the grants are some of the most sought-after dollars on campus today.
| GREAT IDEA |
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At Georgetown, a database was designed to store content freely, and utilize XML to deliver it on demand in real time, to just about any kind of device, in virtually any form or format a user requested. For Georgetown, the missing mobile computing piece was making sure that content was as mobile as the technology itself. |
“The whole idea was to inspire our faculty and department heads to use mobile technology to improve student learning,” says Fisher, who notes that the center also rewards Faculty Innovation Grants of up to $5,000, for individual educators who embrace mobility. “We wanted to make sure we weren’t just handing out an expensive word processor.”
Faculty-centered incentives weren’t Seton Hall’s only approach to solidifying mobile computing on campus: Landry and his colleagues launched an internal marketing effort aimed at students, too. For starters, through a special laptop group within the IT department, the university set up a number of support services such as maintenance and repair. Next, the school mandated that all freshmen take a skills class called “University Life” in their first semester on campus. While this class g'es over basics such as studying effectively and saying no to drugs, it also includes several hours of tutorials on how to use the ThinkPads, how to connect to the wireless network, and how to keep anti-virus software up-to-date. Though most students term the class “cheesy,” Landry says it works wonders, nearly eliminating help desk requests from first-time users.
The final leg of the strategy to ensure the success of Seton Hall’s mobile computing effort is a system of checks and balances dubbed the Mobile Computing Assessment Program. The program, designed in 1998 to provide prompt feedback to the planning team, consists of an annual survey administered to a random sample of undergrads at the school. Survey items and their analysis are managed by a team of faculty members, administrators, and technologists. After every survey, the team shares results with the campus community and the larger educational community, via conferences and publications. Clearly, something’s working: by the 2003 survey, 89 percent of 275 responding students reported that they were “satisfied or very satisfied” with the use of mobile IT in their courses.
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