Students moving into a newly renovated dormitory at the University of Kentucky signed up for a hyperwired college experience: Each one was given an iPad and required to take a series of tech-themed courses.
The unusual program is called A&S Wired Residential College and is housed in a dorm of 177 freshmen, who plan to major in a variety of fields.
Among the $1-million in renovations are 20 wireless access points in the basement and first floor—enough to serve 75 high-bandwidth users at the same time—11 large-screen televisions, which can be connected with multiple iPads simultaneously; and two 82-inch “interactive whiteboards.” The whiteboards will be in the dorm’s two smart classrooms, which both also have 55-inch televisions. The classrooms can do international videoconferencing, too; one class in the spring will feature interaction with a class in South Africa, says Mark Kornbluh, dean of the University of Kentucky’s College of Arts and Sciences.
“We see this as sort of a laboratory of different teaching technologies,” he says. The students in the dorm are meant to be a microcosm of the university, and the related courses are in subjects including “Social Connections: The Sweet and the Bitter of Relationships,” “The Vietnam War,” and “The African-American Experience in Kentucky.”
Each course will be tied in some way to technology. The course on relationships, for instance, will have a focus on social networks. The physics class will require students to use the iPad in science labs, said the course’s professor, Michael Cavagnero, who is chairman of the department of physics and astronomy.
The iPad can serve as a compass to measure magnetic fields, he notes. It has a built-in camera, so it can serve as a spectrometer to measure light source, and an accelerometer, which can measure how fast it is moving.
Students in the class will do regular physics coursework but will also be asked to come up with four projects during the eight-week course. It’s meant to be an “exploratory course,” Mr. Cavagnero says, adding that it is “intended to be as much fun as anything else.”
The overall goal of the high-tech dorm, Mr. Kornbluh says, is to teach students “IT IQ"—the ability to understand when a piece of technology is useful and when it isn’t. Faculty directors and social scientists will be watching to evaluate what’s effective, he says.
Stephen C. Ehrmann, vice provost for teaching and learning at George Washington University and a founder of the Teaching Learning and Technology Group, a nonprofit organization promoting high-tech teaching methods, says he is “encouraged” by the Kentucky project. Often such ideas amount to “giving students and faculty a bunch of gadgets” and not much more, he says, but he likes that the A&S Wired program seems to have a curriculum that integrates the devices, and a way of evaluating what works and what doesn’t.
The key, Mr. Ehrmann says, is how well the college prepares the professors, designs the courses, and adjusts to student behavior. “They’re entering new territory,” he says, “and it’s important to do that with your eyes open.”
