By Kelsi Peace, Managing Editor
Dr. Royce Money, president of the university, unveiled a plan Monday to provide an Apple iPhone or iPod touch to all incoming freshmen, launching a pilot program that is the first in the nation.
All incoming freshmen in the Fall 2008 semester will receive an iPhone or iPod touch to be used in ACU’s plan for mobile learning.
The decision has received praise for its thorough planning and advanced applications as well as opposition from some upperclassmen and students concerned with cost.
Kevin Roberts, chief information officer for ACU, was returning from Apple’s headquarters in Cupertino, Calif., after presenting the university’s vision, when Money made the announcement – but he heard about the response.
“There was apparently quite an audible buzz in the room, and I’ve gotten several e-mails from friends as far away as Tennessee,” Roberts said. “It’s created quite a stir.”
The stir has spread internationally in the past week as top technology blogs, among them Apple’s unofficial blog TUAW, hailed the university for a well-planned pilot program.
“ACU has obviously considered this, and then some,” Brett Terpstra of TUAW wrote. “With apparently wellcoordinated plans to take advantage of the devices – including podcasts, mobile accessible class materials, active-learning strategies and a re-focusing of the campus media – they’re preparing to take maximum advantage of the iPhone/ iPod touch possibilities.”
The university has spent about five years considering such a step with research and discussion, said Dr. Bill Rankin, associate professor of English and director of the iPhone educational research team. And Roberts said all the research has not been to purchase a new gadget.
“This is not about giving people iPhones,” Roberts said. “This is not about a piece of hardware. It’s about the learning and the applications that we do that are educational. We really believe that we are pioneering new learning strategies.”
For now, freshman students will be given the option of receiving an iPhone or an iPod touch, different only because an iPhone has cell phone capabilities. Service provider AT&T is the only provider for iPhones, and not every student on campus uses AT&T, making it difficult to require a switch, Roberts said.
Earlier this semester, the university released “Connected,” a film that showcases the university’s vision for mobile learning.
Applications, including homework alerts, in-class quizzes, GPS-like directions, account balances and e-mail access, among others, will transform the traditional classroom to the 21st century classroom, Roberts and Rankin said.
The move also will change the campus culture because classroom activities and interactions will change with the devices, Rankin said. And while some professors at other universities seek ways to eliminate cell phones from the classroom to prevent text messaging and Internet use, Rankin said ACU professors will incorporate such activities into the curriculum.
Rankin cited a biology lab where students now must gather samples and return to a lab to use the Internet for research. With an iPhone or iPod touch, Rankin said, students simply have to reach into their pockets.
“Now the class can happen in a completely new way,” Rankin said. “The classroom loses its walls; I can go anywhere.”
Proponents also tout the ability to take quizzes in class and receive results immediately, find on-campus directions and receive emergency alerts on the devices.
Rankin uses the attendance application in his classroom already – it sends him an email after he finishes taking roll. He also uses his iPhone to look for facts on Google or Wikipedia, and if every student has an iPhone they can participate as well, Rankin said.
“This is about active learning,” he said.
Not everyone has expressed such excitement. Students created a Facebook group called “Official ACU Freshman iPhone Policy Protest Group,” and as of Thursday 188 students, staff or faculty had joined the group.
On the public wall, students voiced concerns mainly about tuition raises and general costs.
Some wondered if the investment is wise in light of lower admissions rates, professors’ contracts that weren’t renewed and recent construction.
Despite murmurs that the recently approved tuition raise could be footing the bill for the new equipment, Roberts said there is no correlation between the iPhones and the increase.
“The 7-percent tuition increase isn’t paying for your iPhone,” Roberts said. “Right now, we are committed to finding the funding for these; we are right now in the process of trying to identify ways to fund each of these devices.”
The university continues to discuss logistics with AT&T and Apple, Roberts said but would not comment on the negotiations. Some opponents also have criticized the plan for focusing only on next year’s incoming freshmen. But Roberts said upperclassmen haven’t been ruled out.
“It’s not a dodge,” Roberts said. “We are still working with Apple and AT&T . We haven’t forgotten the upperclassmen. We just had to pick a spot and say, ‘This is how we’re going to do this.’ It only makes sense to do that in a pilot, controlled environment.”
The decision to provide the freshman class with iPhones or iPod touches accelerated already-planned WiFi changes across campus, and this summer the university’s infrastructure and programming will need to be revamped to support a curriculum designed to incorporate such widespread use of iPhone applications, Rankin said.
In the original plans, the university aimed to distribute the devices only to freshman honors students – a group of about 120, Rankin said.
A chance to provide the devices for all freshmen came up, Rankin said, and the university chose to expand its pilot program.
“That’s a huge number of people – that’s about 1,000 people,” Rankin said. “That’s going to stretch us dramatically in all kinds of ways .We think we could do that for 1,000. We wish we could do that for more.”
And, he added, change has to start somewhere.
“Last year, we renovated the food court,” Rankin said. “There were people who couldn’t take advantage of the food court. But does that mean we shouldn’t have done it?”
The decision to distribute iPhones and iPod touches to freshmen continues a mobile learning program already in
place at the university, which has used video iPods in the distance education program at ACU Online. Professors also use podcasts to augment their lectures, Roberts said, adding that he expects to see technology use increase at the university as it follows the 21st Century Vision and updates the classroom.
“The 21st-century classroom is going to look really different,” Roberts said. “I am convinced that we are setting up our graduates to be better prepared to deal with the world they’re going to step into. This is how we’re going to do businesses . This is just how it’s going to be.”
As the university prepares to launch its pilot program, a team will evaluate and alter the freshman curriculum to incorporate the technology, and teams will prep faculty to incorporate the changes, continuing a process begun at the Adams Center, Rankin said. Roberts said the university continues to explore options for students who aren’t freshmen – some who could be enrolled in freshman-level courses.
“We’re going to be very careful not to disenfranchise anyone that doesn’t have an iPhone,” he said.
In the meantime, the university must also develop a plan for distributing the iPhones, make a final decision on funding the technology and prepare the campus to support the change.
“My hope is that our vision for how these devices can integrated is correct,” Roberts said. “If it is, I think we’ll have a group of students that will be more technology-aware, they’ll be more information-savvy and I think they’ll be better-connected. And if we can have those three things, than we’ve hit it out of the park.”
-OPEN FORUM-
The Students’ Association is sponsoring an open forum at 7 p.m. Tuesday in Hart Auditorium for anyone who has questions or concerns about ACU’s iPhone/ iPod initiative. Bill Rankin, Phil Schubert and Kevin Roberts will answer questions at the forum.
