A friend and colleague recently asked why NSU didn’t have an iPhone app, and whether we will ever get one. I told him the Center for Teaching & Learning Steering Committee had discussed this same topic a few weeks ago, and offered to share our evaluation with him.
The following document is a collaborative effort generated by the committee in response to a proposal from a local business offering to create an iPhone app for NSU:
CTL Steering Committee
School Insight iPhone App Evaluation
July 1, 2010
The following information is simply an evaluation of the potential purchase of the School Insight iPhone app. No conclusion was drawn, nor vote taken.
Pros:
- Several optometry students own smartphones, as there are some specialized apps they are encouraged to use in clinical rotations and later in their own practices.
- Optometry applicants judge our college and university by our integration of technology in our clinical instruments, electronic health records and the websites against other colleges and universities.
- Use of new technologies, if not prohibitively difficult or expensive, enhances the progressive image of our university to potential students.
- It could be handy for announcing special events (the push function on the iPhone sends automatic messages when something new is added) and important information such as upcoming deadlines, or financial aid info, or sporting events.
- I do not have a smart phone, but I know a lot of people do and they love apps. The cost is very low and affordable. I do not see the harm in having it, I think it is a good idea.
- iPhone apps are very cool, and easier to access away from a computer than a webpage for answering quick needs like schedules or special events on campus.
- It might be good for weather warnings about closings and events.
Cons:
- Not enough students with smartphones?
- It’s not practical on the Tahlequah campus at this point. iPhones are expensive. A few of our students … in Tahlequah have smartphones, most don’t.
- In a poll of my classes this last spring I found only 2 students who had iPhones, less than 1/4 had smartphones, of those less than 1/2 had text service. The remainder of the students had fairly typical phones with a few of those users having text service. This was not encouraging for a group of about 42 students.
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Possibilities:
- Has the potential to give students another option for accessing course content.
- I’ve been looking at the podcasts and vodcasts available on iTunes as potential resources for my online classes (or even live courses). There are several OK universities and colleges that have both available. ie; Rose State University has a couple on women’s history. As we progress in our knowledge of using technology in the classroom, I think having a school app would make it easier for students to access these right (though I know it wouldn’t be necessary, it could provide a central location for students to search from).
- If a department uses podcasts through iTunes, it’s easier to access them from an app.
Concerns:
- Will the app work on the Blackberry, Blackjack, and other smartphones, or just on the iPhone?
- Until a larger percentage of our students have smartphones, spending the money to develop apps is not advisable.
- I don’t see us being able to deliver course content in this way in the immediate future.
- One issue under consideration is using these apps as notification for events and warnings. Unless the student has the app set to accept these messages and it is active they will only get them once they do turn it on. Thus this makes it less than useful for warning students about say an intruder on campus.
- I just wonder what students in Tahlequah would say if they were told that course content would be delivered in part by iPhone and that they not only had to buy the phone but sign up for a two-year contract at maybe $100 a month. I have a young lady in our program right now that I am going to hire to help me with some painting jobs at home because she’s living in the dorms during summer school and she doesn’t have enough money to eat.
- I am all for incorporating all sorts of technology into teaching, but I am concerned about the growing gap between what some of us would like to do (and what needs to be done) and the reality of what our students and faculty are able to do or want to do.
- At the very least, when we adopt a new technology, the students should have access to it on campus or to be able to purchase it with financial aid dollars.
General Comments:
- The $200 a month fee seems reasonable, it is less than the cost of 1 billboard per month, and it looks like we control the content.
- If the administration is looking at an app that would provide schedule information or something else applicable to all or most students or perhaps also alums, that might be worthwhile, but I think most of the usage will be at NSUBA.
- OU and University of Arkansas each have a school iPhone app.
- I would like to explore it further.
- Some university employees are not even using the more basic communication tools now at our disposal. In our department, after adopting new and more stringent requirements for voting, some issues up for email votes have failed simply because many of my colleagues don’t, won’t, or can’t read their email, and hence they don’t vote. I think that deans and department chairs will need to deal with issues like that before we can be very successful at expanding the forms of communication that we use.
- I drag students kicking and screaming through using various Web 2.0 applications every semester, and they have quite a few problems, some of which are related to their own computer abilities and some of which are related to a lack of up-to-date computer equipment and consistent Internet access at home, as most of them are not resident students. What I ask them to do is free of charge to them–I could not ask them to get a smartphone to view course materials as it would be too much of a burden for some of them. I tell them that in my courses I have a secondary objective of improving their computer/Internet skills. Other people talk about educating digital natives and how do we do that when we ourselves are not digital natives — well, in my classes, there are no digital natives. I would imagine that the situation in BA is different, but in Tahlequah our traditional students are coming out of small high schools with almost nonexistent technology, and our nontraditional students are generally not people with much computer experience.
- My colleagues have their own issues with technology — the number of people who use Blackboard as a supplement or even just as a way to disseminate information in a traditional format class is pretty low, and the use of other applications is very limited. When I made the comment in my previous email about people not using their email, I was not kidding. There is a person in my department who comes to me for help when she has to send an email because she does not know how. Other colleagues, including some former department chairs, are famous for rarely or never reading their email. The email voting issue I described may become a serious problem.
- So, I think creating iPhone apps for NSU is great, and I would certainly use them, but I am concerned about the cost and the technology gap.
- There is a digital divide among the students at NSU, which is reflective of American society as a whole. If we are to invest wisely, we need to consider all factors of adoption and application of new technology.
Related Information:
- Here’s a link to OU’s website promo of their app – created internally by students. Looks like, at least for now, it’s only for the iPhone: http://www.ou.edu/web/landing/Articles/2009/august/iphone.html
- Here’s a link to the University of Arkansas app info. Looks like it, too, is only for Apple devices: http://www.arkansasrazorbacks.com/ViewArticle.dbml?DB_OEM_ID=6100&ATCLID=204791024
Linda Summers
