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10 • eCAMPUS NEWS
June 2013
Five of the smallest tech-savvy campuses
Many small schools have been leaders in mobile technology use; here are five such institutions
From staff reports
Innovation isn’t just the domain of large
universities; here’s a list of five small but
technologically advanced campuses that
have set an example for how smaller
schools can be leaders in ed-tech use.
Abilene Christian University
Abilene Christian University (ACU),
long a leading advocate for the use of mobile devices in higher education, has taken
its tech savvy to K-12 schools, where students are becoming familiar with the ins
and outs of tablets such as Apple’s iPad.
ACU’s commitment to mobile technology earned the 4,700-student institution the
distinction of being our very first “eCampus
of the Month” in April 2011, an award given to colleges and universities that push for
more advanced and efficient use of technology.
Three students from ACU’s Teacher
Education Department recently partnered
with a local kindergarten teacher to introduce mobile devices to the class and document students’ familiarity with common
mobile technology terminology such as
“apps” and “upload.”
ACU education students helped the
kindergartners develop digital stories using
mobile devices, while observing the children and how they used each learning tool.
a more participatory learning experience
for students.
“We are an Apple Distinguished
School—a pretty big deal for a small liberal-arts school with about 2,000 students,”
said Betsy Hull Hesselrode, assistant vice
president for alumni relations. “Our signature program is called the iKnow initiative.
Launched in the fall of 2008, the program
blends mobile technology with student
learning and campus life.”
In the past, she said, incoming freshmen
have received a MacBook and their choice
of an iPhone or iPod Touch device. Last
fall, the university gave all freshmen an
iPad instead. All faculty received iPads as
well.
Besides iPads and MacBooks, all students receive Microsoft Office for the Mac.
The software becomes the property of the
student, as long as the student graduates
from FHU. And campus officials have provided a list of recommended apps for the
iPad, such as the FHU Mobile app and productivity tools such as Dropbox and
Evernote.
“Not only will the iPad play a role in
preparing students for employment; we expect it to enhance instruction and improve
student learning outcomes,” Hesselrode
said. “One of the most exciting opportunities the iPad offers is access to interactive
digital textbooks. For example, when bi-
In a recent survey, NWACC students said they wouldn’t change a thing
about the school’s technology.
Paige Francis, associate vice president
of information technology and chief information officer for NWACC, said the school
offers mobile device charging stations for
students to use throughout campus, Google
indoor mapping of our campus, and redundant (real-time) disaster backup for all
systems. The college’s latest endeavor is
implementing the open-source Bedework
enterprise calendaring solution to create a
comprehensive institutional calendar.
Mobile access to NWACC’s systems is up
149 percent, and calls to its student help
desk increased by 800 from summer 2011
to summer 2012—not because of problems
or issues, but “because we’re offering so
much more online now, and people are calling just to get a quick walk-through of
everything.”
In a recent third-party survey about student technology services, a majority of students responded, “Don’t change a thing—
technology is perfect at NWACC.”
Seton Hill University
Westmont’s library offers four unique study areas to cater to students’ needs.
ACU officials said working with Taylor
Elementary students was just the start of a
larger initiative to partner with local K-12
schools. “It is our hope that our students
will become leaders for innovative practice
on their future campuses,” said Dana Hood,
Teacher Education Department chair at
ACU.
ology students are learning about a certain
part of the body, they can click on the text
within the eBook and see 3D images. ... It
adds a whole new dimension of interactive content, and the sky truly is the limit
with what teachers can do in the classroom.”
Freed-Hardeman University
Northwest Arkansas
Community College
Freed-Hardeman University is a private
Christian university in Tennessee. With
fewer than 2,000 students and a student-tofaculty ratio of 14 to 1, the school is known
for cultivating a personal experience in
which students are more than just faces in
the crowd.
Since 2008, FHU also has been on the
cutting edge of using technology to foster
Northwest Arkansas Community
College (NWACC) is a public two-year college located in Bentonville, Ark. NWACC
opened its doors to 1,200 students in August
1990 and now has more than 7,000 students, making it one of the fastest growing
two-year college in Arkansas. It serves another 7,000 students throughout the region
with non-credit courses.
Seton Hill University is a Catholic liberal arts university of about 2,500 students
in Greensburg, Pa. Realizing that students
today “interact with the world in radically
different ways than previous generations,”
Seton Hill was one of the first schools in
the country to give its students iPads.
“We have been committed to using technology to advance student learning since
receiving our first Title III Strengthening
Institutions grant,” said Vice President for
Information Technology Phil Komarny.
The school’s ELITE program provides
faculty with professional development to
maximize the potential of mobile technologies, iPad apps, and Web 2.0 tools. Faculty
receive MacBook Pro laptops and participate in training throughout the year, exploring ways to expand the classroom beyond
four walls and enhance student learning. For
example, pre-service teachers develop video
documentaries of historic buildings, and the
university’s writing-intensive program uses
iPad apps—such as Corkulous—to engage
students in writing.
The Griffin Technology Advantage program puts a MacBook Pro laptop and iPad
into the hands of every full-time student.
Students take advantage of electronic texts,
Discover all the latest news and resources eSchool Media offers today’s educators at: eSchoolNews.com
such as Inkling, to engage with content.
To provide the reliable and secure network that is needed to fully support these
initiatives, Seton Hill has implemented a
new wired/wireless data connectivity solution.
“Enterasys Networks provided a fullscale replacement of the university’s previous Cisco infrastructure, providing always-on Gigabit Ethernet to each user’s
desktop, secure wireless connectivity for
mobile devices, and traffic prioritization for
seamless voice over IP technology across
25 campus buildings in three separate locations,” Komarny said.
Westmont College
Westmont College in Santa Barbara,
Calif., is a private, Christian liberal arts college with 1,300 undergraduate students.
Westmont IT officials have implemented
predictive modeling and cloud-computing
programs to save money and spend budgets efficiently, becoming a model for small
schools looking for ways to survive the
slumping economy.
Reed Sheard, vice president of advancement and information technology,
said the school developed an iPhone app
in-house that includes a searchable campus
directory, calendars, a dining menu, a GPSenabled shuttle map, live streaming of athletic events, and host of RSS feeds, “among
other goodies.”
“We have extensively leveraged Apple’s
iTunes U and have uploaded more than
3,000 audio and video files for student access over the past 18 months,” Sheard said.
“[And] we have our college publication,
The Westmont Magazine, available as a native iPad application.”
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