www.acu.edu /connected
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Faculty, staff and students pose for the camera after wrapping filming in one of the video’s final classroom scenes.
teams. However, several of these novel and prospective uses for the new generation of highly mobile, converged computing devices have since become reality. “One strength of incorporating mobility at ACU has been putting educators and developers in the same room,” says Dr. William Rankin, associate professor of English and director of educational innovation. The chance to work together in producing the Connected video yielded benefits for each group – faculty, students and developers alike.” The video has been viewed more than 107,000 times by visitors to the university’s Web site. Videos about mobile learning at ACU have been viewed or downloaded more than 177,000 times since late February 2008. Q A 32-inch flat screen monitor at the entrance to the Adams Center for Teaching and Learning shows the locations around the globe where people are viewing the university’s Web site. The larger the red circles, the more people who are online. This Google Map graphic represents the traffic generated in one hour – 10-11 a.m. CST on Feb. 28, 2008 – as people downloaded the Connected video on the day the mobile-learning initiative was announced.
2007
ACU’s Connected mobile-learning initiative is the product of a decade of research and experimentation. In Fall 1999, ACU began evaluation of mobile learning by providing IBM laptops to a freshman learning community led by Dr. Paul Lakey, Sherry Rankin, and Randy Daughtory. Later that academic year, Dr. Terry Pope began evaluation of mobile computing in an upper-division course. Though promising, the technology wasn’t quite ready. Over the following years, teams of technologists, faculty, and students – led by George Saltsman and others – continued evaluation of laptops, PDAs and cellphones. Each successive generation of technology presented more promise, and ACU gained an increasingly informed understanding of the potential of mobile learning. When the iPhone was announced in January 2007, discussions of mobile learning reached a crescendo. The time to act was at hand.
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n Jan. 23, 2008, ACU premiered Connected, a 15-minute film showcasing a compelling and futuristic vision of how mobile learning could transform higher education. The HD film, written and produced entirely by Abilene Christian students, faculty and staff, and featuring ACU students and faculty as actors, follows a freshman through her first two days on a college campus. She watches and participates as converged mobile devices such as the iPhone are leveraged to build student community, augment educational rigor and innovation and simplify day-to-day tasks. At the time, many of the applications portrayed in the film were fictional, based on ideas being developed by ACU’s faculty and staff research
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Mobile-learning History at ACU 14
Connected video put a face on ACU’s initiative
The first meeting for what will become ACU’s mobile-learning initiative takes place in the Adams Center.
A recommendation for building a mobile-learning initiative based on Apple’s iPhone is first presented to ACU’s LINK team for consideration.
April 18, 2007
May 2, 2007
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In June 2009, CIO magazine announced ACU as a recipient of its 2009 CIO 100 Award. The 22nd annual award program recognized organizations around the world that exemplify the highest level of operational and strategic excellence in information technology. ACU was one of only six universities named to this prestigious list. Other recipients included AT&T, Dell, GE Energy, IBM and PricewaterhouseCoopers.
What we want to do with this program is tap into each student’s innate abilities. We want to transform the shape of the classroom from that factory model, where everybody sits in ranks, and observes and consumes, to a model of engagement, where each student becomes a resource in the class. It’s hard with a standard textbook, which is static and uniform, to encourage that sort of diversity, right? But with a little tiny device – fits in my pocket – that has access to the whole world, to the whole world’s knowledge – to databases at libraries, to media files from all across the world, to things like YouTube and Flickr where people are putting up their own images – when I give students access to that, I give them a possibility for discovery that didn’t exist in the classroom before.”
Dr. William Rankin
ACU ranked No. 1 for innovation
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he August 2008 edition of the U.S. News & World Report on “America’s Best Colleges” showed ACU continuing its top-tier ranking among universities. It also appeared in a new category recognizing innovation among 70 schools that peer institutions believe “everyone should be watching.” ACU was ranked the No. 1 “Up-and-Coming School” in the Universities-Master’s western region. Q
Associate Professor of English and Director of Educational Innovation
Following positive responses from LINK, the Mobile-Learning Executive Team convenes for the first time, drawing up plans for a written plan to be presented at a previously-scheduled meeting with Apple.
A team from ACU presents the 40-page “The Apple iPhone & ACU: The Case for Development & Deployment of the iPhone in Higher Education” at Apple Headquarters in Cupertino, Calif.
The Mobile-Learning Executive Team begins meeting weekly to set strategic goals and plan the future of ACU’s mobile-learning efforts.
The Mobile-Learning Executive Team approves turning the “day-in-the-life” story from the plan into a video to be directed by senior Matt Maxwell.
ACU begins development of a blog focused on integrating mobile technologies in higher education, overseen primarily by graduate student Brice Nordquist.
May 11, 2007
June 6, 2007
July 16, 2007
July 18, 2007
July 26, 2007