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E-MAILColleges deploying mobile learning apps
by Thor Olavsrud | June 20, 2011
Distance learning has been a growing trend in higher education for years, and now many colleges and universities are taking it a step further with the creation of mobile apps that allow students to engage with their education in and out of the classroom.
"We have to catch them where they happen to be," explained Satish Menon, senior vice president of product strategy and development with Apollo Group, which operates the University of Phoenix. "The way I keep making progress in my work while on the road is using my phone and my iPad. I'm doing real work. And the same thing happens with our students. They're working professionals. This is an efficiency application for them. We have to do this because that's how people are interacting these days."
The University of Phoenix is a private, for-profit university that boasts more than 400,000 students. It is geared primarily toward online, distance learning for working professionals seeking to further their education. But the trend toward mobile isn't a phenomenon limited to the online university. Blackboard, a company that specializes in learning apps and technology for schools ranging from K-12 to colleges, has also seen a significant increase in interest in its Blackboard Mobile solutions, an extension to its Blackboard Learn platform.
"Most of our clients in the US that have a significant deployment of Blackboard Learn are very interested in deploying Blackboard Mobile," said Olivia Spain, vice president of mobile sales for Blackboard. "It is something we've spoken to the fair majority of our clients about in the past 12 months. We're seeing a lot of our customers put aside budget for mobile."
Like Menon, Spain explained that colleges and universities are expressing interest in mobile apps because that's where the students are.
"We're starting to hear a lot from our client base about seeing mobile devices show up on campus," she said. "It's not just about academic life. It's about engaging with their students--giving them information where and when they need it."
Schools taking the plunge
Among the schools taking the first steps with mobile are institutions, such as the Stanford University School of Medicine, which lent iPads to all its new students last August; Abilene Christian University, which started giving all new students the choice of an iPhone or iPod Touch in 2008; Seton Hill University, which started giving iPads and MacBook Pros to all full-time incoming students last fall; and the University of Washington, which is focusing its efforts on expanding wireless and cellular coverage on its main Seattle campus and making its Web content easier to use on mobile devices.
However, these programs haven't been without problems. For instance, The Chronicle of Higher Education found that in most classes, half of Stanford's medical students stopped using their iPads only a few weeks into the term.
A new paradigm for distance learning
There are a number of reasons why a student might choose not to use a mobile device. Part of the problem may be that thinking around what is delivered on the device is too mired in the old way of doing things. Pat Partridge, vice president of marketing and enrollment for online university Western Governors University, believes that it's not enough to take traditional education and deliver it via the mobile medium. Instead, he said, educators need to think about how to use the capabilities of mobile devices to deliver experiences that are geared to their strengths.
"Most people in higher education, and to some extent K-12, we tend to look at technologies as simply tools that plug into how we've been delivering higher education for the past 500 years," Partridge said. "And that's very short-sighted and limiting. The world of online education is better thought of as technology-enabled education. What does that look like in the future?"
Western Governors University, for instance, has built its educational program around asynchronous academic work, opting to leave behind the idea of instructor-led education.
"We didn't simply take the traditional instructor-led class and morph it over into the online environment," he said. "We broke all of those rules. Our students are not tied to particular instructors and particular schedules."
The University of Phoenix has not taken quite as radical a position as Western Governors University, but Menon agreed that mobile apps need to leverage the medium's strengths.
"The mobile medium doesn't lend itself to writing lengthy essays, but it does lend itself to taking a formative assessment while you're waiting for your train," Menon said. "In online learning, there's a number of learning activities, some of which lend themselves to mediums like this and some don't. At the University of Phoenix, we use this instruction strategy--collaborative discussion groups--very heavily. That lends itself very heavily to mediums like this."
Spain noted that Blackboard is seeking to make use of some of the unique capabilities of mobile devices to bring something new to the table. For instance, mobile learning apps could give Archaeology students the capability to take pictures with mobile devices while at a dig and instantly upload them to a classroom discussion board.
"We're just at the beginning," she said. "It still is very early days for the interaction component and being able to do things differently."
So just what are mobile devices being used for these days? When the University of Phoenix launched its Phoenix Mobile app for the iPhone and iPod Touch in April, it gave students the ability to draft and post to discussion threads and reply to other students' posts on the university's discussion forums; view message flags, discussion questions and class announcements; and receive real-time alerts when grades are posted and when instructors post new information. Menon said 65,000 to 70,000 students downloaded the learning app within the first month.
Blackboard's Spain noted that the most popular uses for Blackboard Mobile include checking grades and participating in discussion forums. However, she also said that in addition to apps for academics, students are very interested in applications that relate to campus life, like maps, social functions and athletics schedules.
Technical hurdles for mobile apps
Interest in deploying mobile apps may be high, but actual deployment is not without its difficulties. Aside from the challenge of delivering strong security and compliance with the Family Educational Rights and Privacy Act (FERPA) pertaining to student records, as yet there are no common standards to ease the pain of cross-platform deployment.
"The big challenge that we tackle is the fact that there are multiple devices out there and multiple operating systems on those devices," Spain said. "It is, in our mind, necessary to provide a solution that is digestible on as many different devices and operating systems as possible. Our belief is that the interaction with your course content and your teaching and learning is really a critical use for the mobile device. We are taking great strides to make sure our solution is available on as many devices as possible."
Menon echoed that sentiment, noting that it is the reason the University of Phoenix has so far only deployed an iPhone version of its mobile app, though an Android version is in the works.
"When you move from iPhone to Android, it's a difficult problem because it has many different forms," he said. "The amount of testing that you need to do, maintenance, etc., rolling it out on multiple platforms could easily overwhelm a smaller institution."
