SU Launches New Integrated Mobile Learning Program
Starting in the fall semester of 2009, the university will put the new environmentally friendly MacBook and Apple iPod touch into the hands of all incoming first-year, full-time students.
Shenandoah University will soon launch a new environmentally friendly integrated mobile learning program, iMLearning, to provide students and faculty with the tools to enhance student learning and engagement. The program also delivers on the institution’s commitment to campus sustainability.
Starting in the fall semester of 2009, the university will put the new environmentally friendly MacBook and Apple iPod touch into the hands of all incoming first-year, full-time students, some graduate students, and a portion of the full-time faculty. In addition, 100 “loaner”laptops will be divided between the Alson H. Smith Library and Institutional Computing for part-time students, adjunct faculty and students who need to have their computers repaired.
“This integrated mobile learning program will radically transform the way students learn and professors teach,”said Shenandoah University’s Senior Vice President & Vice President for Academic Affairs Bryon Grigsby, Ph.D. “The integrated use of mobile technology connects students and teachers in versatile, dynamic communities of learners and provides creative linkages and connections throughout our academic and co-curricular environments,”he said.
This integrated mobile learning program will radically transform the way students learn and professors teach,”said Shenandoah University’s Senior Vice President & Vice President for Academic Affairs Bryon Grigsby, Ph.D.
The new mobile learning environment will:
• Create a “classroom flip”model, where items that take away from faculty working with students, such as lectures, quizzes and videos, can all be accomplished outside of class
• Access online resources that open the classroom to world-wide experts, from Thomas Friedman lectures at the London school of Economics, tours of medieval armor at the Metropolitan Museum of Arts, to drug interaction software for pharmacy and nursing students
• Allow any classroom to become a laptop classroom
• Standardize digital tools so faculty and students become more comfortable using the equipment in class
• Permit the institution to offer unique technology programs that enhance classroom management and student engagement
• Enable students to more easily connect with student life and the faculty. The iPod touch provides a simple way to notify students of campus events, professor office hours and locations, and course changes