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A New Kind of Academic Freedom
4/19/2004
Technology "is just getting smaller and more mobile all the time,"
says Peg Schultz, the director of instructional and client services at Pomona
College outside L.A.—and as that happens, devices become more and more
popular with students. "We’re going to probably have to think of
PDA access as we migrate to [Microsoft] Exchange 2003. We’re [seeing]
more PDAs that are wireless—people wanting to pick up e-mail or surf.
As security improves, we’ll find many more people jumping on the bandwagon."
At UMC, Lim is hoping for a better convergence of cell phones and PDAs "The
cell phone has a great potential because it’s so convenient and everyone
has [one]," he says. But it has a ways to go to be a useful learning device,
he says. "If it combines some PDA capabilities… that will really
enhance it as a communication and learning tool." So far, he hasn’t
seen a device that effectively integrates functions of the PDA and phone. "Right
now, you have either a good phone or a good PDA, not both."
The other holdup in using that sort of handheld wireless device for learning
is software. "Of course, until we create some compelling software which
isn’t constrained by that little screen," Lim points out, "or
until we have some learning platforms," the device won’t really be
effective for learning, at least.
Lim also says that more challenging than the technologies themselves is changing
the mindset of faculty, staff and administration to embrace new ideas in IT."The
faculty will always be a generation behind our students," Lim says candidly.
The faculty and staff’s willingness (or unwillingness) to embrace a new
technology "affects how they teach, and how they design learning programs."
In order for a university to truly embrace a new model like mobile computing, Lim says, "we’ve got to invest in training our teachers, rather than just investing in the infrastructure. Training is often like an afterthought – you can end up with hundreds of laptops sitting around, with students and teachers not using them."
"Training is often like an afterthought – you can end
up with hundreds of laptops sitting around, with students and teachers not using
them."
Wireless Still Getting Up to Speed
The relatively slow speed of the average wireless network compared to wired broadband often makes it a companion technology to wired rather than a replacement. At Pomona, Schultz says, "We certainly wouldn’t want to use [wireless] full-time. We [hard]wire all of our buildings and our dorms. We aren’t suggesting that people go completely wireless, but it’s a nice companion. If you need speed, it just isn’t there."
Its current speeds limit the usefulness of wireless, agrees Lim. With the current
standard of 802.11b deployed on his campus, he says most students get just one
or two Mbps throughput. "Naturally, that’s not fast enough for our
students." A wireless technology’s maximum speed is seldom what’s
actually delivered. "So when we upgrade to 11g, which is five times faster,
[students] may not get 50-some megabits per second, they’ll get five to
ten megabits per second."
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