Students in Ronald A. Yaros’s Info 3.0 class at the University of Maryland at College Park this fall will use a smartphone app specifically designed for practically everything in the course: Writing blog posts, sending tweets, and shooting video interviews.
Mr. Yaros doesn’t allow laptop computers in his classroom but not because he doesn’t expect students to look at screens. Instead, he asks them to bring a tablet computer or use their smartphones to follow along with his interactive demonstrations during class, which he can beam to their devices using another app, called Nearpod. With a swipe of the finger on his iPad, the screens on his students’ devices change as well. In addition to slides, he pulls up work the students have done in the week since their last meeting, as well as asks open-ended questions, polls them, and shares PDFs on the small screen.
Keeping students constantly working with their devices is the best way to bring mobile technology into the classroom, he argues.
“That’s key for instructors, to keep it a little bit more engaging,” he says. “Otherwise, I would probably say: Don’t use it. Go back to the traditional way.”
By using the course app, students can complete assignments whenever it’s convenient for them, Mr. Yaros says. They can also receive text-message reminders when assignments are due.
Mr. Yaros is one of the professors paving the way for the use of mobile technologies in the classroom. Around the country, professors are looking to reach students not just on laptops but on the smartphones and tablets they carry throughout the day. Mobile technology is also making it easier for professors to flip their classrooms and to hold students accountable for taking in readings and videos outside of class.
Helen Crompton, an assistant professor of teaching and learning at Old Dominion University, says her students can scan a QR code with their phone to immediately call up a set of questions about their assignment and what topics they need help understanding when they enter her class.
One challenge Ms. Crompton has faced is that although personal use of smartphones is second nature to students, they often don’t understand how to adapt the technology for learning. She says there are many apps that they could, and should, use to support their learning.
“It’s a pedagogical game changer,” she says.
Putting Devices to Use
At the University of Washington, as at other institutions, smartphones and tablets are omnipresent. Students there want to use them to complete administrative tasks, and faculty want to use them too, although they aren’t always sure how, says Tara B. Coffin, a research associate in the university’s IT department.
Smartphones could also supplant clickers, says Henry F. Lyle, a research scientist there. But other factors, such as whether all students have devices that will be compatible with their classes or whether the buildings have dependable Wi-Fi, pose a challenge to that.
Professors at Seton Hill University are under pressure to incorporate mobile technology into their classes: All students are given a MacBook and an iPad as freshmen. Emily A. Wierszewski, an associate professor of English and composition, has made iPads a central part of her freshman courses, using comics to help students construct papers.
In one assignment, for example, she has them draft a comic strip about how society communicates gender norms, focusing on children’s toys. Students use their iPads to take photos of toys and mix those with other media, such as videos of commercials, to create a research-based comic strip using an app called Comic Life.
Students also use their devices to comment on Twitter during class, or to record interviews with others on campus for assignments. “It allows them to leave and return to the classroom space in ways that they maybe couldn’t before,” Ms. Wierszewski says.
To minimize the potential for distraction, she says, it’s important to plan class time to make sure students are using the technology in a purposeful way. She also holds students accountable by having them post evidence of their work on social media or share their progress on an assignment with the class.
Regena L. Scott, an assistant professor at the Purdue Polytechnic Institute, has students watch lecture videos on their own time, so they will be prepared for in-class activities during the 50-minute class.
When they get to class, they use university-owned laptops or tablets and software such as Minitab, a statistical-analysis program, which gives them experiences they can point to in job interviews, she says. It also keeps them interested in class, since they can see the connection to their prospective jobs.
“Mobile technology is here, and it’s here to stay, and it’s the way that students engage,” she says. “Because they communicate so much through technology, it’s a logical step for us as faculty to step up to the plate and meet them where they’re at.”